Comparable products are typically 3x or more the price. A lot of costs are not BOM related, e.g. costs for tooling (e.g. plastic mold), certifications, testing & calibration etc.
Original Echo was insanely overpriced relative to BOM costs. Plus now that they have a big volume they've probably negotiated better deals for their cost-down design components.
It wasn't my intention to imply that it was expensive - within an order of magnitude of current prices shows how relatively cheap it was, given that electronics and sheer scale will have driven down the cost of parts (if not necessarily the end user cost).
I expect the difference is in the vendors' margins (i.e. nowadays the option price is almost pure profit/salesperson's commission).
I wonder what the difference between the cost of Amazon's technology is vs Monoprix's service?
Monoprix may have found that they can make more money / save on initial outlay of shop fitting by offering a similar service, but without the technology.
Hopefully you'd think they compared those costs and still found the in-house option would be cheaper in the long run. Who knows, though, or who knows how accurate their estimates were.
You can have nicer things, you just have to pay for it.
But because of economies of scale, you don’t just pay the difference in BOM cost, you pay that difference plus the difference in fixed costs divided by a much smaller unit run.
USB UPSes exist, and they’re really not that niche. Amazon has one for $50. That’s mass-market pricing as far as electronics are concerned.
reply