BOM (Bill of Materials) on the new controller is likely in the $50 (or sub) neighborhood if I had to make an educated guess based on the costs of past Logitech Harmony products (shhh, inside source).
That price fits well enough with an MSRP of $299 if the product were going to be carried through distribution and then retail, with Logitech selling it in volume at about $100. The product is certainly high priced, but this has nothing to do with manufacturing costs at the consumer level. Most consumers have no idea how little it costs to produce most of the crap they buy. The value proposition is based on personal desires/requirements and the existing market for that (or similar) class of products. The controller isn't a universal remote control, so it's unfair to compare to those products even though their BOMs may be similar. What a BOM doesn't include is the engineering effort required to design both the hardware (usually the simplest part) and the software. Yes, it's nice to have an open product, but this is an area where Logitech is saving a bundle by not providing an even more robust feature set right out of the box. Since this is a designed and marketed as proprietary controller, albeit using some pretty standard and wide reaching hardware components, it must be compared against other devices that would fit into similar systems. Namely the SONOS controller. The Slim product line is in a bit of a unique quandary because it can also be controlled by a number of other products in a handheld form factor, such as the Nikia devices and iPod Touch product. Back to price... Even if I knew for a fact the BOM was $50, I'd still want one. And will likely still get one any pay $300 if I have to. With that comes a level of expectation of course. Mainly related to fitness and polish. The drawback to using any other "generic" device at this time is having to use a plain web skin which is anything but truly interactive. The whole game changes with a custom application running on one of these other devices, but as a consumer, one generally wants a finished product. This is where the Logitech products are being aimed. A lot of potential revenue has ben left on the table over these past years with the Slim lineup. Excellent products, excellent software, but the whole ball of wax just wasn't wrapped in a consumer-friendly package. I've said it before, this is why products like SONOS and Olive have done so well, despite their very high prices. Now how about a discount for loyal forum participants? :) -- MelonMonkey Bruno *'Twisted Melon - Fine Mac OS Software' (http://twistedmelon.com) | 'mira - Personal Control for your Apple Remote' (http://twistedmelon.com)* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MelonMonkey's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8466 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41805 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
