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Google Glass Parts Estimated to Cost Less Than $80

8 points by Kopion 12y ago

coloneltcb 12y ago
So what's the rationale for charging $1500 to early explorers? Pure greed? Desire to keep out the riff raff? All of the above?
- joezydeco 12y ago
  C'mon, people need to know better when reading stuff like this. There are R&D costs. Tooling costs. Multiply that by the number of scrapped early revisions. There's all kinds of costs that just don't show up when you get the luxury of adding up the finished parts with Digi-Key open in your browser. I see a bunch of pretty complicated tight-tolerance plastic parts in there[1], not to mention the optics which need to fit pretty precisely. What did tooling cost for that alone? The article itself mentions that this isn't a simple injection-molded piece: "The Glass display, for example, is only a few millimeters wide, but boasts quite high resolution and could have been tricky and expensive to design and manufacture." [1] http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-teardown/teardown/glass-teardown-exploded-top.jpg http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-teardown/teardown/glass-t...
qq66 12y ago
That's the marginal cost of the raw components. That doesn't even begin to describe the total cost of parts (validation/tooling/inventory), which itself doesn't begin to describe the total cost of manufacturing, which itself doesn't begin to describe the total cost of the product.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
The most interesting thing here to me is that if they are willing to bet long-term they could sell this for under $150/200, get it in a LOT of people's hands, and become the dominant player eventually making the R&D money back. I'm sure it would also be quite easy for them to make a lot of money through accessories for this (glass cases, interchangeable frames etc.).
- whoismua 12y ago
  Still needs to answer the "what does it solve" question. I am not sure most people will use this daily...even if it was free.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    I think that if it makes a few things easier (even if you don't wear it all day)(e.g. cooking, travelling, driving) people would be willing to spend $150-200 on it. Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a more indispensable device that fits a lot more needs.
    - whoismua 12y ago
      Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a more indispensable device that fits a lot more needs. Why hopefully? I don't understand what's in for the world, other than potential, real time spying?
omilu 12y ago
These tear downs are super interesting and useful, and I'm sure the folks doing them aren't delusional about the sunk costs that went into development of something so complex.

8 points by Kopion 12y ago

So what's the rationale for charging $1500 to early explorers? Pure greed? Desire to keep out the riff raff? All of the above?

joezydeco 12y ago
C'mon, people need to know better when reading stuff like this. There are R&D costs. Tooling costs. Multiply that by the number of scrapped early revisions. There's all kinds of costs that just don't show up when you get the luxury of adding up the finished parts with Digi-Key open in your browser. I see a bunch of pretty complicated tight-tolerance plastic parts in there[1], not to mention the optics which need to fit pretty precisely. What did tooling cost for that alone? The article itself mentions that this isn't a simple injection-molded piece: "The Glass display, for example, is only a few millimeters wide, but boasts quite high resolution and could have been tricky and expensive to design and manufacture." [1] http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-teardown/teardown/glass-teardown-exploded-top.jpg http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-teardown/teardown/glass-t...

qq66 12y ago

That's the marginal cost of the raw components. That doesn't even begin to describe the total cost of parts (validation/tooling/inventory), which itself doesn't begin to describe the total cost of manufacturing, which itself doesn't begin to describe the total cost of the product.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

The most interesting thing here to me is that if they are willing to bet long-term they could sell this for under $150/200, get it in a LOT of people's hands, and become the dominant player eventually making the R&D money back. I'm sure it would also be quite easy for them to make a lot of money through accessories for this (glass cases, interchangeable frames etc.).

whoismua 12y ago
Still needs to answer the "what does it solve" question. I am not sure most people will use this daily...even if it was free.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  I think that if it makes a few things easier (even if you don't wear it all day)(e.g. cooking, travelling, driving) people would be willing to spend $150-200 on it. Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a more indispensable device that fits a lot more needs.
  - whoismua 12y ago
    Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a more indispensable device that fits a lot more needs. Why hopefully? I don't understand what's in for the world, other than potential, real time spying?

omilu 12y ago

These tear downs are super interesting and useful, and I'm sure the folks doing them aren't delusional about the sunk costs that went into development of something so complex.