The race to the bottom could be the end of real OSHW. Real meaning HW that really has an impact on the world, not just something cheap that does what a thousand boards already do, like blink LEDS, but is really cheap. There were a lot of MSP430 boards sold for $4.30. I suspect that most of them are now in a desk or some other place. Impact was not lasting.
There is a number out there that says the price should be 2.6x the cost of the BOM. I will say that the X-15 will be less than 2.6x the BOM, but it is not in the pitiful range of the BBB margins. There is some margin there to allow people to support it and invest in it, making it better. And hopefully use it for something more than a fast Linux build machine or an LED flasher. At some point, the race to the bottom has to stop. I suspect we will see $1 boards soon with $35 shipping and handling. The reality is the price you see is not the price you pay. I will say, the price you see for the X-15 will be the price you pay. Gerald On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 4:42 PM, rh_ <[email protected]> wrote: > I was reading about a $9 board on kickstarter. It is based on an allwinner > chip. > > An interesting board and price. A loss leader for sure but I don't know > what the loss will lead to. Bankruptcy? Dissolution? Too many long > days? I wonder if they know or if they are too busy rolling in $$. > > The reason I am posting here is because the BB-X15 makes sense in the > context of a $9 board. Racing to the bottom never ends well and hides > true costs in all aspects of any endeavor and maybe more so in a modern > engineering project because of the raw materials required, the wages > that some in the chain get (or don't get), etc., etc. > > But does the X15 go too far the other way? Or is the projected price > closer to a real price with profits built in? This is more rhetorical > but the $9 board price is curious and made me reconsider the X15 price. > > p.s. I don't know the X15 price and maybe no one does. The ballpark > price was hinted at in previous post on X15. > > > > -- > For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "BeagleBoard" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Gerald [email protected] http://beagleboard.org/ -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
