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Originally Posted by Cthulhu
I wonder just how far the economy of scale could be pushed in a case like this?
Sadly, it seems that there are too few takers on this new device (I'm still on the fence about this purchase, though I'm trying to inveigle a friend to get one), so Bookeen may not reach their 1,000 orders mark.
However: what if 10,000 people said yes to the device at $30?
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Yeah, probably won't happen. But I know that I could blow $30 on an e-ink device much easier than $300.
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Hah! Listen, one of the things we considered was buying the e-ink display modules from the prime source of e-ink displays and assembling our own device and marketing it. For anything less than 50,000 units, we weren't going to get the display itself - and that's not even counting the display controller module, the main processor board, the power supply, the SD or CF support, the case and control wiring - for less than around $120US. And even were we able to come up with the money for those 50,000 displays, they really didn't want to talk to us because they wanted a first order that was larger.
Sure, if we could have come up with the money for 50K-100K units, we could have brought our *cost* down to around $200-$220. But that would have meant scraping up at least $10,000,000!
Eep!
And we would have had to repeat the process with the design for the main controller board as it would have to fit into the custom case.
We're thinking of attempting this for our version 2.0 device as the display technology may advance in a year or so.
Derek Benner