Recently a netbook, the Caszh S30 was dissected in an effort to see what kind of profit margins were involved. The short answer — very little, in fact this estimate is suggesting that the profit margin is roughly $6.
That is based off of a sales price of $205 US and a build list showing a total cost of $198.91 US for parts. It seems that with prices like these the builders have little room for error, and any error could eventually put them out of business.
In terms of the Caszh S30, this particular model featured a 10.1-inch display, Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 1.3-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, a 50 watt wall power adapter and a 3-cell battery.
This particular teardown seemed pretty thorough, it even listed the “Mylar, Screws, Magnets, Acetate, Aluminum Foil and Stickers” for a total of $0.95 US. Of course, I would imagine that pricing on some of these parts are changing daily, especially in such a competitive market.
But still — $6 per unit, a business is a business, but that seems like they are going to have to sell quite a few netbooks just to make a decent profit.
[shanzai.com via Netbooked]
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