Posted on Thursday, May 01 2014 @ 10:22 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
ARS Technica
writes analysts from Teardown.com estimate the Google Glass has a bills of materials (BOM) of just $79.78. The report received some criticism as the pricing of some components seems to cheap to believe but Teardown.com costing expert Al Cowsky responded that he believes it's $90 to $95, at most. Google responded to the report by calling it 'absolutely wrong' but declined to comment further.
Glass received a few teardowns after its commercial launch last year, but they hadn't come hand-in-hand with detailed part-cost estimates, with the exception of a China Post report singling out the eyewear's liquid crystal on silicon display rig as having an estimated $30 cost.
Teardown.com's estimates mostly seemed reasonable, at least on a wholesale basis: $5.66 for a 5 MP camera, $13.96 for a processor, $8.18 for 16 GB of NAND memory, and so on. But compared to China Post's 2013 guess, Teardown.com's estimate for Glass's high-PPI "display/touchscreen and glass" seemed too cheap to believe: just $3.
