It always makes me laugh when I hear about $99 smartbooks competing with netbooks because the only real difference in cost is a few dollars in silicon, plastic and battery.

The other thing that makes me laugh is how people get hung up on parts cost and potential profit while forgetting the market reasearch, r&d, marketing, distribution, training, support, legal, insurance, shipping, tax and, shock!, profits associated with a device.

Have a look at this isuppli breakdown and you’ll see just how much a high-end smart device costs to make . A high end netbook selling 1m+ is coming in at about$150 due to the cheaper screens and lack of gps, accelerometer, hard drive and other components. The r&d and market research figures are also close to zero in the netbook market so you can see that large format smart devices have a long way to go before they become sub $200 desirable items.

Another good checkpoint is the Archos 5 Android Tablet which, with a similar integrated cpu and gpu, smaller battery, 8GB storage, 256MB RAM, less plastic, open source OS and a 5″ resistive touchscreen is being sold for $240.

Source : iSuppli.

iSuppli breaks down iPad cost, guess how much 3G costs | GottaBeMobile.com.

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