I hate to date myself, but back in the day we didn’t have computers, iPads, cell phones, Blackberries, 3D television, video games, or kindles. Back then we had a radio, a television set (black and white), and maybe a phonograph. That was a motorized needle that fit in the groves of those big black vinyl things called records. Finally, we became advanced enough to have smaller portable radios with transistors in them.
I remember my excitement years later when I got a calculator at work. Before we had to do the multiplication on an adding machine. Most of our electronics had cylindrical light bulb-looking things in them called vacuum tubes. These allowed you to keep your appliances for years and years instead of throwing them away every few years like we do now. Back then you could actually repair them yourself.
I started writing on an ancient Underwood typewriter that my parents had picked up for 5 bucks at a garage sale. I remember that much later I paid almost $600 for a Brother word processor. A few years after that the first computer hit the markets. IBM told Bill Gates it would never sell.
Appliances were expensive back then but at least with a little repair skill you could keep them running for a long time. My grandparents had the same refrigerator and television set for over thirty years. All you had to do was keep replacing the tubes in the TV and put a new gasket on the refrigerator every few years. Today it seems like you could buy a new electronic gadget every year and still not be up to date.
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We all know that when a new electronic gadget comes out it may take awhile before the price goes down. Somebody has to pay the price for all of that innovation. According to Men’s Health Magazine, here are the actual costs to make some of today’s favorite ele4ctronics:
The Apple ipod Nano costs $45.10 to make. Apple’s profit margin on this item is some 70%.
How about the HTC Droid Incredible? That one costs $163.35 to make and at a retail average of $250.00, that’s a 69% markup.
The Blackberry Torch costs $183.05 to produce and the profit is about 63%.
To make an Apple iPad 16 GB Wi Fi costs Apple $257.65 to make. They get a profit of 59%. That works out to a cost of around 400 bucks.
A second generation Amazon Kindle costs $185.49 to make and the profit margin is 48%.
The Apple Mac Mini is $387.14 in materials and production and the profit is 45%.
The Playstation 3 is a real bargain. It costs $336.27 to make and the profit margin is only 12%. I guess they have to sell a lot of them to make any money. Wait, they do, don’t they?
So it looks like you are paying about 60% over what it costs the manufacturer for most of today’s electronic gadgets. And the great news is they will probably be outdated in about a year. No wonder my computer is almost ten-years-old.
Source: menshealth
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http://mybargainblog.com/what-do-todays-electronics-really-cost/