Quote:
Originally Posted by afv011
Margins are very tight. Once a company I worked for was even looking at the number of screws used on a mobile phone to reduce costs - and a screw costs way less than $2, so $2 is not an insignificant amount of money, especially if you expect to ship large volumes of devices. I also would prefer to have SD slot, but I understand that some sacrifices have to be made to reach the $200 price point, and I rather they sacrified the SD slot than skimp on the CPU or screen or RAM.
|
Of course, in this particular case there is something to it. They wanted to hit the exact $199.- price point rather than sell for $205.-. Google branded devices serve more as "reference designs" and don't sell that much. What is very unfortunate is that many people now have come to think that SD card slots are expensive and unnecessary. Google is setting a very bad example here. When they are included they cost next to nothing, and they should be standard on every device. Look at cars, they now all come standard with air conditioning, even when you live in the frozen tundra. Customers accept nothing less. And by always including something you really drive down costs.