Surface teardown shows cost price

[Jeremy Proome]

Surface teardown reveals real cost

Microsoft’s new Surface tablet features a low-cost of production after a teardown analysis

 

[Axis]

Gross profit. Rent? Marketing? Salaries? A lot of costs have not been taken into account. Stupid analysis.

 

[Kayoss]

Gross profit. Rent? Marketing? Salaries? A lot of costs have not been taken into account. Stupid analysis.

+1 Agreed.

I'm actually quite surprised it costs that much. I think that marketing alone will be one of the biggest expenses. I'd be somewhat surprised now if they're even able to make a profit at that price.. Maybe the idea is to break-even or even run a small loss on the tablet itself. If that's what it takes to get a decent size share of the market in order to make huge profits from apps and future hardware.

For example, if i remember correctly, Sony made a huge ($100 if i recall) loss on every ps3 sold initially, but make huge profits in the long run from complementary products (games/controllers/play store) and eventually from lower manufacturing costs..

 

[KalMaverick]

Gross profit. Rent? Marketing? Salaries? A lot of costs have not been taken into account. Stupid analysis.

There's nothing stupid about the analysis. The point of these are to be able to compare them to other products and for it to actually make sense in terms of the cost of the product.

The reason some costs are not included is because you don't need marketing to manufacture a tablet, it's an expensive to get it sold and the topic after all is the cost price of the Surface.

I would also hazard a guess that the applicable rent and salaries that go into making it would be added under the manufacturing cost.

 

[bekdik]

No software cost either

 

[Fudzy]

No software cost either

What?

 

[Hamster]

What?

Windows 8 on the device itself maybe? Or maybe some of the apps MS developed themselves.

 

[InTheCube]

There's nothing stupid about the analysis. The point of these are to be able to compare them to other products and for it to actually make sense in terms of the cost of the product.

The reason some costs are not included is because you don't need marketing to manufacture a tablet, it's an expensive to get it sold and the topic after all is the cost price of the Surface.

I would also hazard a guess that the applicable rent and salaries that go into making it would be added under the manufacturing cost.

Agreed, but then they should talk purely about manufacturing cost, and not even mention the word profit, or at least put in a disclaimer. A lot of people will simply substract the price listed in the article from the retail price, and assume the remainder is pure profit.

 

[GreyBush]

Best bet is to compare it with the competitions teardown costs.