Google makes money on Nexus 7... just
Cash for Flash
Google will not, it seems, be selling its low-cost Nexus 7 Android tablet at a loss, but it's making less money out of the hardware than Amazon is with the Kindle Fire.
The cost of the two seven-inch tablets' components and how much the two firms pay to have them assembled sees Google cough up $159.25 (£103.08) for the 8GB Nexus 7 while Amazon pays $139.90 (£90.56).
Both companies charge buyers $199 (£128.81) for the finished products.
The figures come from market watcher IHS iSuppli, which has disassembled both fondleslabs and totted up the cost of the parts they contain. It also estimated how much Google and Amazon pay - $7.50 (£4.86) and $6 (£3.88), respectively - to their respective contract manufacturers to put the devices together.
Inside the Nexus 7
Source: iFixit.com
Of course, that's not the whole story: both US giants' profit-loss spreadsheets have to factor in the cost of shipping the tablets from Asia to the States and elsewhere, plus how much thy spend to promote the products and to write the software the devices run.
But iSuppli said it reckons that Google will nonetheless still break even on the 8GB model and make a wee profit on the 16GB Nexus 7, which retails for $249 (£161.18) and costs $166.75 (£107.94) in parts and labour. Punters are willing to pay more than a proportional increase in price for the extra Flash storage.
Both Amazon and Google will be looking to make more money by encouraging tablet owners to buy content from them than they stand to make on the devices, but it's interesting that neither (yet) sees the hardware as a loss-leader. Both have room to drop the price of their tablets further, and will no doubt do so if they perceive competitive advantage in doing so - and can get more folk to cough up for high-margin digital content on the back of it.
Falling component prices will only make such a move easier for Amazon and Google. For example, the Kindle Fire's components now cost $133.80 (£86.61), down from $191.65 (£124.06) when the device launched in November 2011. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Ye Typo
:-)
But actually, not unless you want 'sire' to punish you for lack of respect. Thee, thy, thine etc. are the informal second person pronouns. In English we dropped these for the formal you and your in all circumstances, thus removing the chance of slighting your betters with informal pronouns. This being the case, it would never have been proper to refer to someone of the title 'sire' with thine
.
It seems to me, the reason that people make this mistake is threefold:
1) The constant usage of thee, thou etc. when referring to God in the King James bible - apparently this is because one always uses the informal when referring to God due to the personal relationship with him.
2) Poetic usage of the terms (especially in Shakespeare). Actually when used, they are either intimate relationships, or used deliberately to be offensive. The context is everything.
3) We aren't taught any of this stuff in school.
Ye Typo
"plus how much thy spend to promote the products"
Not normally one to pick these things out, but shouldn't it be:
"plus how much thy spend to promoteth thine products sire"
Re: Ye Typo
Well, yesssss... the question is to whom and under what circumstances one can be informal without causing upset.
Re: Ye Typo
3) We aren't taught any of this stuff in school.
But nonetheless, those of us who grew up in t'north some years ago still use thee and thou, thy and thine... and also occasionally the old 'st' endings: dost thou? Canst thou?
"Don't thee thou me lad; I'll tell thee when thee can thou me!"
Despite having a lot of Germans in the family, I still haven't fully worked out the rules for the grammatically similar 'du' and 'Sie'... but I do know that using 'du' to the wrong person can get them very upset. Safest to ask, I reckon.
Re: Ye Typo
That's actually one of the most interesting posts I've seen here for quite a while, well done. (I didn't know any of it).
