What do these things cost to make?

[Deleted User]

OK, so it's not exactly bristling with features, but it does have 8.1 MPs and flash, and for just £18. :eek:

You could buy them for your child(ren), and not have to worry, in case they get lost/broken.

John_Gray

So it's just about the modern equivalent of a Box Brownie, then!

[Deleted User]

A tad more sophisticated (built in electronic flash and a 4X digital zoom), but yes, I guess you could say it's the modern equivalent of a Box Brownie

Still, for less than 20 quid. :cool:

forgotmyname

8mp maybe worse than my old Fuji 2800 2mp camera though.

I bought a 4mp Polaroid to replace my old Fuji 2800 and it was junk, I gave it away to my sister as a present.

£20 for the kids to mess with is good though. I bought mp4 players when the ipods first came out. Much better than the ipods. Well they were a fraction of the price and didnt tie you to apple.

WIN WIN. Sisters kids destroyed them. But my daughters still got hers, Battery is rubbish now but still works.

chrisw

Many of the compact cameras are worth next to nothing second hand. It's possible to pick up a much higher spec top brand on eBay for less than £20 these days.

[Deleted User]

forgotmyname wrote: »

£20 for the kids to mess with is good though.

This is what occurred to me.

Suppose you were going on holiday.

You could buy your kids one of these each (add a small SD card, for a couple of quid each), and they could take their own photos, without you having to worry about them losing/breaking it.

agrinnall

John_Gray wrote: »

So it's just about the modern equivalent of a Box Brownie, then!

That is about right in terms of cost, the Box Brownie was $1 in 1900 and an inflation calculator makes the 2014 equivalent $28.57.

Nilrem

IIRC the way a lot of these really cheap cameras are done (same with a lot of really cheap electronics), is that they're using parts that are very old in electronics terms, and no longer considered suitable for top, or even second tier stuff.
Or parts that have been produced in massive quantities but outdated before the original buyer had a chance to use them, and thus taking up space in a warehouse that is almost more valuable than the actual part*.

With modern digital cameras a lot of the cost no longer resides in the actual sensor (they've started to reach the point where you can't shrink them much more without running into major issue), but things like the lens.

So a camera that appears to have a fixed lens, no internal battery and a small screen (probably originally from a landfill mobile phone), can be made very very cheaply, and sold even cheaper if you've got a bunch of them sat in a warehouse.

IIRC with a current modern digital camera the actual lens is often more expensive than the electronics because they're reaching a point where the sensors can't be shrunk much more usefully because of the physics (I can't remember the specifics but they're reaching the point where the lenses can't gather enough light, and the individual cells on sensor are running into problems with the "signal" they pick up from the various wavelengths of the light they're tuned to being so weak that the "noise" is getting too high, so the only way to really increase the resolution is to increase the physical size of the sensor, and the lenses).
And the actual lenses are harder, more time consuming and in some ways complex to make than the semi conductor used in the sensor, as the sensors are using semiconductor fabrication processes that are often very very well established (and as near as possible perfected) and production lines that have been running for years.

But aye, it's basically a box brownie, very basic, very well established and cheap to produce parts thrown together in a no nonsense way.



*I suspect they've actually used parts originally intended for mobile phones and tablets from about 3-5 years ago for the camera given the resolution and fixed lens sound like the specification a bunch of mobile phones were sporting 5 years ago before they started to get variable lenses as standard.

Collabora

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

OK, so it's not exactly bristling with features, but it does have 8.1 MPs and flash, and for just £18. :eek:

You could buy them for your child(ren), and not have to worry, in case they get lost/broken.

Next to Nothing. I bet an iPhone 6 costs way below £100 to make and what price does it cost to purchase as an enduser

InsideInsurance

Collabora wrote: »

Next to Nothing. I bet an iPhone 6 costs way below £100 to make and what price does it cost to purchase as an enduser

The iPhone 5s 16GB was estimated at $198.70 (the 64gb was just $20 more). Not sure there is any reason to believe the 6 would be significantly different.

Of course that is just the cost of parts plus $8 to assemble it and doesnt factor in the R&D to create it, shipping, tax, marketing, sales etc

Collabora

InsideInsurance wrote: »

The iPhone 5s 16GB was estimated at $198.70 (the 64gb was just $20 more). Not sure there is any reason to believe the 6 would be significantly different.

Of course that is just the cost of parts plus $8 to assemble it and doesnt factor in the R&D to create it, shipping, tax, marketing, sales etc

Reported costs by the media, but i bet they were not the true costs of manufacturing. i have worked in manufacturing and in retail and know what true costs to manufacture goods.

what you need to look at is

Manufacturing costs are X
This sold to Distributor for Y to give z profit
This then sold to wholesaler for xy to give zc profit
This then sold to Retailer for C who sells to enduser for C to give P profit

so to OP that camera would most likely cost £2 to manufacture