159?
Retailer cut is usually less than 5%, so anywhere from 2.50 to 12.50, say 8= 167
Shipping, likely 1.10 per unit in bulk shipment=168, packaging, 1.50, 170.

Cost to put the parts together and labor? Probably around 10$ per unit.

So, 180 in total?

Cost of developing games, R&D, advertising....It's probably really close, but better and better the more they sell, obviously. They totally make bank on the 3g, and given the memory card...they probably make around 50$ on average between the two variable consoles.

We'll probably never know how much Sony make/lose on each unit even if we knew the price for all the components as there are so many costs to take into consideration.

Fixed:
R+D,
Setting up production lines,
Initial advertising.

Variable on production:
Paying workers to: (combing parts, box them, customer service, etc)
Shipping costs,
Retailer margins,
Banking costs, (transfer charges/VISA etc)
Continual advertisement.

And on top of that you have more after sale costs to take into consideration such as
Technical support
Producing extra units to replace faulty ones under warranty
Producing extra individual parts for replacement/fixing
Paying people to fix them.

This is just off the top of my head.

Sony may well still have profited on each unit sold, but we won't know just by looking at part costs.

People are forgeting Fixed COST
-The R&D spent to making the ps vita
- the salaries to pay all the workers involve making and selling the vita
- the buildings/factories/utility cost.
These are just variable cost of each vita.

People are so fixed in the micro-view of a product.
Need to look at the bigger picture.

Hold on a second Euphoria. You list UBM as the source however they don't seem to be the source of what you posted. They are the source of the component list. As far as I can see they make no estimation as to the price of the components.

That estimate seemingly comes from the website gamezone. A site I have never heard of and seems to have a tiny tiny readership. In fact the site Gamezone provides no sources at all for the costs of the parts. Where did they find them? We have no idea.

EDIT: Maybe gamezone paid for the report then simply reposted the figures from it? Maybe, pretty harsh on UBM if they did that though. 

As has already been pointed out, this is simply the BOM and lots of costs haven't been considered (for example licensing costs on operating system). When all costs are considered, I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony breaking even or losing money by selling the system at $250.

In Japan they definitely make nice profit with each Vita sold because of strong yen(25 000 yen = $324, 30 000 yen = $388). In the west they probably take a bit of hit per Vita at least in the beginning. Vita is still definitely the most profitable Sony system since PS1 to sell as after that every system have been sold with rather huge loss in the beginning.

Hmm is it just me or that calculation doesn't include quad core gpu ?

I failed, i know. 1.75, i meant

well I didn't see that coming..if this is at least remotely true..then forget about making a huge profit or anything..worst case scenario Sony could be breaking even or losing very small amount of money on a unit sold and it will only get better for them as time goes..great if true