Quote:
Originally Posted by fozmsu
To Gten's point, I work for a company that makes jet engines, when we put a new engine on the market, it takes ten years to start showing a profit due to all the time and money invested in developing the technology. After that ten years, the profits are huge, but it takes time to get to that point.
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Jet engines are a totally different story, they have to have top notch quality because peoples lives are in danger, plus government regulations have to be met. However, phones, computers and other tech devices are now just commodities that have slight variances every year to keep the product looking fresh.
Lets look at the PS3. Yes, it at first cost alot of money for Sony and Sony supposedly loses money on the first year, but thats not how a company usually values its investments. What they do is take the investment cost and divide it with the number of years the product will produce money for them. So say the PS3 cost them a billion dollars to make, well, dividing it by the number of years sold, say 5-10 years, and the price is only 100-200 million, and thats not even taking into account productivity gains etc. So overall, Sony never lost a penny on consoles. Thats how business is done, nobody expects to make money the first day because of the initial investment.
Now lets take Apple, they have been producing tech stuff for 30 years. They know the ins and outs of the business very well and know how to save money on parts and manufacturing. For them to pay 180 on a commodity like a phone is outrages. Samsung is using the same chip for their Galaxy phones, so more chips=lesser chip prices. The Gorilla glass iphone uses has been out in the market for years by DOW chemical. Memory prices have been low for many years now. High res screens have been in the market for years too. There is nothing new or extra ordinary to justify that phone costing more than 50 bucks to make. And that goes for any phone. All Apple did is take all those things and put it in a nice package and slap on a good OS. Same with HTC, they take the same tired junk thats on the market and slap it in a new frame and call it new again. The Touch Pro 1 and 2 only had a bigger screen and nicer keyboard, the rest of the internals were almost identical.