Quote:
Originally Posted by Haesslich
I just went to a Coles - they're saying the covers might not be available until mid-November now. Originally, the cover release date was (tentatively) October 14, the same day as the Kobo Glo/Mini official release. Now...
And judyz, Amazon has gone on record saying that they sell the hardware at no profit, or at a loss, since they make their money on the book/audiobook/media sales, just like razor companies do on razor blades. And I'd like to find out where you're getting the cost-per-unit, as well as your calculations (including the costs of tooling, factory time, shipping, customs, etc) to figure out they'd get a $10 cost per unit. I'd be throwing in at least another 50 cents for the magnet, for example. Not sure what sort of reject rate they've got on the manufacturing side, which the COGS has to cover as well.
And given this most recent delay... that's got to be a really damned high rate of failure/rejection. About the only part of your post in which I'm in agreement with is that they should've had those cases out the day they started shipping devices, just to get a nice add-on sale. As it is, this appears to be another Kobo launch problem; just like the Vox shipping issues from the last round.
|
iSuppli is a great place to get information on actual product costs if you are interested. There are also quite a few other sites on the web if you are interested in learning more about supply costs. I would also highly recommend an ebay search. You will be flabergasted at the cost of items when purchased directly from the manufacturers in China.
A simple search will also help you to discover that magnet prices specifically are qutie low as well. Especially when buying in quantity. Even an average consumer can purchase a 150 pack of rare earth magnets (
www.rare-earth-magnets.com among others) for a retail of 5 cents a unit.
The original Kindle Fire cost Amazon $2 more than they were selling it for. Amazon didn't care because they knew they would make that back off the first electronic purchase.
I personally don't see the corelation to the profit margins on the device the decision to make poor choices about the case. Since there is no requirement to buy an official case Kobo only hurts themselves by not having them available and not pricing them competitively. Third party suppliers will be happy to eat up the high margin case sales.