

Google Glass Parts Estimated to Cost Less Than $80 - Kopion
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/30/google-glass-parts-estimated-to-cost-less-than-80/

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qq66
That's the marginal cost of the raw components. That doesn't even begin to
describe the total cost of parts (validation/tooling/inventory), which itself
doesn't begin to describe the total cost of manufacturing, which itself
doesn't begin to describe the total cost of the product.

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omilu
These tear downs are super interesting and useful, and I'm sure the folks
doing them aren't delusional about the sunk costs that went into development
of something so complex.

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k-mcgrady
The most interesting thing here to me is that if they are willing to bet long-
term they could sell this for under $150/200, get it in a LOT of people's
hands, and become the dominant player eventually making the R&D money back.
I'm sure it would also be quite easy for them to make a lot of money through
accessories for this (glass cases, interchangeable frames etc.).

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whoismua
Still needs to answer the "what does it solve" question. I am not sure most
people will use this daily...even if it was free.

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k-mcgrady
I think that if it makes a few things easier (even if you don't wear it all
day)(e.g. cooking, travelling, driving) people would be willing to spend
$150-200 on it. Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a
more indispensable device that fits a lot more needs.

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whoismua
_Then hopefully with more real world use Google can make it a more
indispensable device that fits a lot more needs._

Why hopefully? I don't understand what's in for the world, other than
potential, real time spying?

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coloneltcb
So what's the rationale for charging $1500 to early explorers? Pure greed?
Desire to keep out the riff raff? All of the above?

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joezydeco
C'mon, people need to know better when reading stuff like this. There are R&D
costs. _Tooling costs._ Multiply that by the number of scrapped early
revisions. There's all kinds of costs that just don't show up when you get the
luxury of adding up the finished parts with Digi-Key open in your browser.

I see a bunch of pretty complicated tight-tolerance plastic parts in there[1],
not to mention the optics which need to fit pretty precisely. What did tooling
cost for that alone? The article itself mentions that this isn't a simple
injection-molded piece:

"The Glass display, for example, is only a few millimeters wide, but boasts
quite high resolution and _could have been tricky and expensive to design and
manufacture_."

[1] [http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-
teardown/teardown/glass-t...](http://www.catwig.com/google-glass-
teardown/teardown/glass-teardown-exploded-top.jpg)

