iPad Mini Costs $24 More To Make Than Kindle Fire HD

sweetpea86 writes "... but retails for $130 more. Teardowns of the Apple iPad Mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD have revealed that the two devices cost almost the same amount to manufacture, despite the retail prices being significantly different. Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst of teardown services for IHS iSuppli, explains that Apple is sticking to the premium brand strategy it has always used for its media tablet and smartphone products, whereas Amazon is banking on content."

Re:Few things

[garcia]

It's not surprisingly low, it's surprising how high it is and how someone could possibly be open to the idea of higher profit margins on their devices.

I was in the market for a 7"-ish tablet. It was down to the FireHD, Nexus 7, or iPad Mini. While I was extremely disappointed in the price announced for the Mini, I ended up getting one anyway for a few reasons:

1. We have iPhones and my kid (who will be the primary user of the device) is already accustomed to the interface

2. The educational games/books we've downloaded for it are already there and ready to be synced.

3. I liked the educational software available in the Apple app store over what I saw available for both the Kindle and the Nexus 7. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough--I don't know but it seemed much better from the Apple side.

4. Everything the FireHD can do, the iPad can do possibly better depending on what review you read (the external speakers being one downside but I don't believe he'll be needing stereo speakers).

5. I like the look, size, and weight of the device with the larger screen.

6. As an Apple (iPhones, Mini, and MBP) and Amazon customer (I'm a Prime member and use them for video rentals, most online purchases, etc), I simply preferred the Apple device even though it was considerably more money.

YMMV.

Re:How much donated to FreeBSD for each sale?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always enjoy people who don't understand the motivations behind people who release stuff with the BSD license. Hint they don't do it for the money.

Re:Few things

[ignavusinfo]

Macs were a great unix desktop ten years ago, now they just kind of blow.

I'm curious ... what's changed? I get a lot of mileage out of OS X as a developer workstation and am honestly wondering what I'd gain by switching back to Linux.

I know there's a lot of talk about cost but that's irrelevant to me, $1k this way or that over the life of a computer just doesn't matter much. There seems to be discussion about the "walled garden" but at least for what I'm doing (Erlang, Scala, Ruby, Lisp, Postgres, MySQL, Emacs, &c.) I've never run into an issue. Nor has there ever been much of an issue deploying to Linux once the code's written.

So what blows?

Re:Few things

[mike260]

The point is, apple's profit isn't actual quality - it's just a surcharge for people dumb enough to buy

At this point there are quite a few counterexamples out there - Apple users who are clearly not dumb, nor suckers, nor computer-illiterate.

Seriously dude, it's time to let it go.

Luxury Devices

[fldsofglry]

This seems to come up a lot. Apple is overprice, apple is overpriced. Perhaps they are just the "luxury" devices of the computer world. I feel this applies to cars as well, but I don't see people posting that Lexus' or BMW's are overpriced. A Ford Focus gets me from point A to point B just as well as a Benz, but the perceived quality and status symbol of the Benz helps keep prices high. Hell, I had a Nissan that has gone 235,000 miles at a much lower price than "luxury" cars. So Apple charges more than other device retailers/manufacturers? Why is this surprising? So does BMW and Lexus compared to Fords and Chevy's.