| Sorrow880 said: The blu-ray diodes started out costing OVER $100.00 each. Now estimates are that they are around $7.00 each and will be even less once the format war is over. That will be nearly a $100.00 savings right there. That $100.00 savings has already been passed on in a price cut meaning that Sony isn't losing anymore $$$ than they were before. That's another reason I think we'll definitely see another price cut sometime this year. |
Add to this that the huge losses calculated on materials were related to components bought before production started. The initial component stock is certainly exhausted, so, for example, Sony is buying hard drives at prices enormously lower than the initial ones, especially the 40GB units, that now are "bargain bin" items. The BD unit other than for the blue laser diode, should now cost less also for the rest of its HW. Add to this the savings started on the Cell CPU as soon as they started using the 65nm process ones and also the fact that after producing millions of units also savings due to the refinement of the manufacturing process start to kick in.
Add finally to this the higher prices and poorer equipment in EU since the beginning and the result is that perhaps in EU they have already stopped losing money on the HW.
