We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm - Winston Churchill
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Kindle Fire hardware costs are re-evaluated
THE COST OF MAKING Amazon's Kindle Fire is less than analysts IHS Isuppli had previously thought.
IHS Isuppli had estimated that Amazon will be making a $10 loss on each Kindle Fire, however it has revised that to the slightly more sensible loss of just under $8.
A loss is a loss, but this is one that Amazon will pull back in on ebook sales, which it has already said are higher than its paperback sales.
According to Isuppli's earlier estimates the bill of materials cost for the Kindle Fire was just over $209 thanks to components like a $87 touchscreen. Other costs include the memory chips, $25, the battery, $18.25 and the processor, $15.00. Now the firm says that the Fire costs $201.70.
"The Kindle Fire, at a retail price point of $199, is sold at a loss by Amazon, just as the basic Kindle is also sold at a loss at the current $79 retail price point," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, teardown services for IHS.
"Amazon makes its money not on Kindle hardware, but on the paid content and other products it plans to sell the consumer through the Kindle."
The touchscreen remains the most expensive part of the bill of materials but it seems that Amazon has managed to shave off a dollar here and there by choosing some unexpected providers. The use of a Jorjin WLAN module instead of a Broadcom or Texas Instruments equivalent, for example, has lead to a $1 saving.
Texas Instruments is doing okay out of the hardware however, and takes just under 13 per cent of the Kindle Fire costs, or around $24. Amazon sources its touchscreen display from two companies, LG Display and E Ink.
One obvious saving comes from the amount of DDR2 DRAM, as Isuppli had previously estimated that the Kindle Fire would ship with 8GB. In fact it ships with only four. Elpida supplied the DRAM in the Kindle Fire torn down by IHS Isuppli, and combined with NAND from Samsung, memory costs $22.10 per device, while previously the firm had put a $25 price tag on the memory therein.
Battery and processor costs have not gone down, and in both cases Isuppli has assumed that the Kindle mimics the Blackberry Playbook. This would give it a Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor. µ
Tags: Hardware
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I am wondering how long M$ will keep Windows at $140 price tag. The hardware prices are plummeting. Plus most of the applications are web based. There hasn't been major improvement after windows XP. Office got worse since 2003. I don't see a reason why Microsoft should stick around for too long at these price tags.
My Kindle Fire says it comes with 6.54 GB total.
It is stated in this article that.....
"The use of a Jorjin WLAN module instead of a Broadcom or Texas Instruments equivalent, for example, has lead to a $1 saving."
Jorjin is just a system integrator. They take anybodies chip (Broadcom, Atheros, TI, etc.) and produce a solution for wireless devices to meet a cost and/or power requirement. The Jorjin WIFI unit number is WG7310M which I got from the ifixit.com website which did a breakdown of the components. They link the Jorjin WIFI unit's number to the Jorjin website and lo and behold you will see that indeed it IS a Texas Instruments WIFI chip that powers that unit, specifically a TI WL1271.
You are also correct in assuming that it is a TI OMAP 4 for the CPU, its just under the huge DRAM chip and has to be desoldered to see it. It is specifically a TI OMAP 4430 dual core running at 1 GHZ with an integrated PowerVR SGX54 GPU. There are a few reviews of this CPU/GPU combination that say that it performs as well and in some cases better than an Nvidia Tegra 2.
So...in the end...the Kindle Fire, with the exception of the Hynix DRAM chip and the Samsung Flash memory is an all Texas Instruments affair.