
Winning bid for NYPD body camera contract comes under lobbying attack - JumpCrisscross
http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/10/the-lobbying-war-behind-the-nypds-body-camera-contract-106117
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turc1656
Can no one at the NYPD or anyone employed by the city of New York do math?
$6.4M for 5,000 cameras is close to $1,300 for each camera. WTF? Brand new
flagship smartphones which have thousands of patents and countless additional
features can be sold at profit for ~$700. You're telling me ONE feature of a
smart phone with some slight modifications for the NYPD can't be obtained for
a fraction of that cost? GTFO. These cameras should cost $150 a piece, not 8x
that price or more.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for tagging every cop in the country with a
camera. But the cost is absurd and typical of our wasteful government.

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philipov
This argument seems to ignore that the cost of production exhibits economies
of scale. The consumer mass market has different margins from a niche
industry, even if both produce cameras. A small company can't leverage nearly
the same marginal utility that Apple or Samsung can.

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turc1656
Yes, mass consumer devices have economies of scale that exceed VieVU's
capabilities. No doubt about that. But that might account for 20% of the cost
and at face value given what the article stated, the product seemingly costs
many multiples of any reasonable fee.

Also, there should be some sort of economies of scale involved when VieVU is
providing tens of thousands of cameras across the country. It's not just the
NYPD.

I did some additional research and posted a follow up comment that sheds some
light on the breakdown of the cost. It makes it more tolerable but still too
expensive in my opinion.

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akiselev
20% isnt even close. Where did you get this number?

In my time working in hardware (across consumer devices like smartphones and
specialized devices for industry) I have never seen a product with only a 20%
difference between low volume and mass manufacturing costs. The difference is
in the range of 200-1000% when talking about going from 10,000 to a million
units, depending on manufacturing setup cost. The lower range is only
achievable if your manufacturing line is uninterrupted which I doubt is
possible for such small orders and it's impractical for a small government
contractor to make many units all at once due to inventory costs and risk.

$200 at 10,000 units for a device that sells for $50 or $25 at a million units
is par for the course for any hardware product.

