Your $1,500 Google Glass Built with $80 in Parts

What is the true price of being a glasshole? While developers and consumers alike have paid $1,500 for the privilege, the bill of material Google Glass price is actually $80.

Wow, just effing wow.

Think Apple’s prices and margins are high? Pfft, a 40 percent mark up ain’t nothing! The bill of material (BoM) cost of Google Glass is $80 — multiply that by 18.75 and you get Google’s $1,500 retail price.

On April 15, like other members of the tax paying American public, the fine feathered folks at Tech Insights bought the hype.

However, they didn’t buy Google Glass just to become yet another glasshole on an elevator or party. They took Google Glass apart, piece by piece, in order to find out Google’s real cost, the bill of materials price.

Yep, $79.78 of mostly off-the-shelf bits of junk, glasshole priced and ready for just $1,500 — operators are not standing by.

For what it is worth, a Google spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that price estimate is “absolutely wrong.” He did not offer any detail on what that response means

Of course, if the estimate was off by one-tenth of a cent, Google could say it is “absolutely wrong” with a straight face, such is the nature of the “truth.”

Google Glass Price of Innovation

Obviously, like the Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy S5, Google Glass is far more than a simple collection of parts. Google has invested mightily in engineering the hardware and especially the software ecosystem to make Google Glass work.

That is, however, assuming Google Glass has a meaningful purpose.

Yes, we can imagine what some of those purposes might be. However, why would Joe or Jane Sixpack would be interested in paying $1,500 in the vein that maybe someday someone will figure out in the future? Yeah, that’s crazy.

And, people say that Apple fans a religious zealots? Pfft, fandroids are the real jihadis…

What’s your take?

Via Daily Digest