My feeling is that *at the moment* we're looking at under $1K for a crop sensor to $3K for a fullframe.
Edmund
For the benefit of this rumors thread let me give the guesses for P1 and Fuji economics:
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- P1 pays a sensor $3K.
- They add $1K-$1.5K at least for the for the infinity planetary computer or whatever they call it ie, a decent LCD and touchscreen, probably a microcomputer board based on an FPGA eg Xilinx Zink or something similar to interface with the sensor, maybe some fast static RAM to read out the frame data, maybe a second microcomputer board to manage the user interface, a lot of RAM to store the images, some well designed power management circuitry, and military-grade chips everywhere, expensive circuit boards, very high grade internal connectors. The whole thing is avionics-grade The electronic board assembly is subcontracted to a high-end small-scale manufacturing subcontractor who makes a batch, eg 500.
- Case costs eg. $100
- Protection glass cover etc. $50
- Final assembly costs when the sensors - delivered in very small batches - meet the backs "just in time". This involves an extensive calibration process, optical and electronic to make sure the focus plane is in the right place, and measuring the sensor's base characteristics. These will be burnt into the firmware, and retained for reference by the company. This final assembly process probably cannot be outsourced. Final assembly probably involves 1/2 day of highly skilled work for each back. Say $500.
So I'd guess that the marginal cost of each back that gets sold is around $5-$6K, and I'd guess they are pushed out the factory door with an invoice at $15-20K, which leaves some money on the table for the various company execs to pay themselves a salary, and for the techs to do the R&D for IQ5. The dealer invites the customer for a presentation cocktail and resells the thing at $40K or whatever they really make a customer pay these days for an IQ4-150
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For Fuji it's a different story.
My guess is they have crop-sensor costs of $800 or so, as they are doubtless now the largest buyer of these chips.
They will make their own simplified and miniaturised board, possibly using their own ASICS common to several cameras they manufacture.
They get really good deals for the LCD and RAM etc ===> So $300-$500 for electronics
$300-500 for physical camera construction and assembly including shutter and lens mount
Final Assembly and testing is done on their own production line for a big batch, but in Japan. $300 final assembly costs per camera.
So Fuji end up with $2K marginal costs for their whole camera, and they then ship it into their distribution system with an internal invoice around $5K and are perfectly happy. It will now go into a rabbit hole where creative accounting happens.
The box ends up at B&H who ship the thing out via Fedex and invoice the customer $7.5K
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All of the above are pure guesses. People with a more realistic view of things are welcome to comment.
Notice that in the end it really doesn't matter a lot whether Phase pay their sensor $3K or$5K today, because in absolute terms this would make up 10% of variation in the invoiced factory unit price of a back they assemble "just in time" today and deliver tomorrow. They will just bill their dealers $2K more, but the customer won't notice it. The huge margins provided by the dealer system cushion the large costs in parts when a product is in its launch phase. Chips get much cheaper during the lifetime of a product.
Also, the Phase dealers don't really get to keep all of their huge margins. Nobody pays list. In the case of institutional sales there are a large number of "incidental" costs. The dealers may have to purchase dealership demo units, and loaners for customers, handing their own hard-earned money to Phase. They need to have a "Doug in the box(TM)" to help customers. They need to spend days and days teaching customers to use C1, help them install it etc. It all mounts up.
In the case of Fuji, the company can still afford to lower its prices by a fair amount, because their distribution system does not *need* to be expensive, and a large company does not *need* to make a large profit on each unit shipped.. Of course, they will only risk lowering their pricing when they have amortised the R&D and are confident that they understand the product and will make economies of scale. But at that point they could come down to retail $5K fairly easily, in my opinion.
As I stated in the beginning, all of this is pure back-of the envelope guesswork. And my text shows that I don't understand that much about manufacturing and pricing, unfortunately. But maybe someone who does can help ...
Edmund