Oh, how I love these product tear down price studies, wherein some research company grabs a product, rips it apart piece by piece, and pins a pricetag on each individual component to announce a somewhat shaky cumulative price. With at least a couple of the components in any given device being proprietary, a bit of it is educated guessing. Whether they’re dead on or completely wrong, how would we know? It’s not as if any major company is going to come out and say “Pfft, what? Product X actually costs [amount here] to make, thank you very much.”
Whatever – they tear it down, I just report it. Research firm iSuppli has stripped the T-Mobile G1 down to its naughty bits, and has emerged with a number: $144. That’s $35 bucks less than the subsidized 2-year contract price of $179, and $255 less than the full retail price of $399. While that doesn’t take into account R&D, labor, shipping, nor the money T-Mobile makes on a monthly basis from plans/contracts, I’d imagine that the numbers work out in their favor in the long run.