Dear BJL,
What I was saying, to be clear, is that the cost of a sensor in the total costs of a manufacturer are those in my post above. Usually around 30% for a new product. The rest being mainly R&D and software costs + Parts. To these costs the manufacturer applies a gross margin which gives a "Export Price", the price the distributors are paying. This Gross Margin can obviously vary from one product to another (see answer to your last question below), but usually not from one distributor to another (or from one country to another), except for special deals (based mainly on quantities or special promotions in certain countries). I believe this is known and can be understood by all.
What happens after that can be very different, from one manufacturer to another, and I believe this is where there is so much confusion in pricing (not only with manufacturers of DMFBs): some manufacturers are working with MSRPs (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) or RRPs (Recommended Retail Price) or List Prices. We all know that these prices have been created to have a standard worldwide, or at least in some regions, but we also know that there are huge differences in "final" retail prices (so-called "Enduser Price") despite the MSRPs, simply because these "Enduser Prices" cannot be the same everywhere. While many distributors are working with these recommended prices with their endusers, some simply cannot: the transport or shipping costs, the import taxes, the import duties, the luxury taxes, the storage fees at custom clearance, the insurances, etc ... are sometimes/often very different from one continent, country or region to another. This gives a "Landed Price" which can be very different from one country to another. All distributors have to work with these "Landed Costs", to which they apply their margin: most if not all of the distributors are working with the same and normal margins, but the "Landed Price" makes the difference. Some countries in Asia are a good example for how it can be different, and I could write a book about it (grey market, smuggling, etc ...).
To answer your last question: I cannot speak for Leaf and the Aptus products in particular. But I can speak for what I know. There are products which include less/more margin than others (Entry product, Top-of-Line product, products which are discounted, products which have reached the "Break-Even" (Total Costs = Sales).
Remark: in your last sentence (... R&D dominates costs ...) you forgot the word "
software": these together represent the main costs. Software costs are not to be underestimated: think about the number of people working alone for the software part, they have to be paid somehow, given that most MFDB manufacturers are giving the software FOC. But no, it is not FOC, a software.
Best regards,
Thierry
Do you mean that the price to MFDB makers are 15% to 30% of the total retail price? I have been told that the normal process of margins along the way mean that each $1 increase in component costs can add about $3 to retail, and if so, your percentages translate to sensor costs causing about 30% to 60% of retail price.
I can see that defraying R&D over unit sales only a few percent of what 35mm format DSLR's achieve and way under 1% of mainstream DLSR volume is a nasty cost multiplier too!
But if R&D dominates costs, not sensors, can you explain the big price differences between the Aptus-II models 5, 6 and 7 and 10? R&D costs should be similar for all models, with sensor differences then main difference, which makes me naively believe that sensor costs have a lot to do with the retail price.
