Re: "Another item, Mac sold for $2000 with a clear profit to AAPL of $1000, and the dealer made about $400, which put the production cost under $600. The board and box etc cost about $300 and the rest was AAPL dev overhead."
I think your numbers are a little skewed. At the Mac's introduction, it's suggested retail price was $2495. Dealer margins were between 30% and 35% depending on volume. Of course there were discounts to consumers. A number of Macs were seeded to developers at zero cost. Many more were seeded to sales pros at a bundled price of $1495, which included an Imagewriter printer, Multiplan, MacWrite and MacPaint. Within months after the initial roll out, the $2495 price was updated to reflect the full ImageWriter bundle as seeded to sales less the Multiplan software.
Also, the $2495 price was competitive with the rest of the market. A fully configured IBM PC XT bundle with printer at roll out approached $4,000 MSRP.
I fully agree that there was room for lower prices which may have garnered market share more quickly. I do remember reading something at the time to the effect that Apple's before profit cost of manufacturing the Mac was somewhere around $1,000. Hindsight being 20/20, it would have been a major coup for Apple if they had gone for volume production and sales at a price point of $1695 MSRP. The world might be thinking a lot different now.
As I recall, the Mac also represented a new fully automated manufacturing process learned from Japan. The Pepsi guy, John Skully, really blew that opportunity!
Good hunting,
HerbVic |
