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The article says that the hardware was generally sold at cost, though.



Doesn't that mean cost of materials/COGS though?

Which doesn't include the overheads (engineering and staff, development and maintenance of back-end services, legal and compliance and all the rest) that you would normally plan to cover with the gross profit on the device.


It's a good question what exactly they meant by 'at cost', but it's at least going to be the plain hardware cost (plus maybe shipping), I suppose. And the point of the parent and GP was that the overheads shouldn't be that significant either, so it is still a bit of a mystery where exactly they spent that much money.


Even if the hardware is sold at cost, you still have to pay for running the service.




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