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Send questions about site content and general comments to purchasingpro@digikey.com.Amazon's Kindle Fire BOM totals $185.60
Display and touch screen are the biggest cost drivers in the media tablet
12/01/2011
The bill of materials for Amazon's Kindle Fire totals $185.60, with the display and touch screen accounting for nearly half of the BOM cost, according to researcher IHS iSuppli.
The media tablet’s manufacturing costs total $16.10, so the total cost to build the Kindle Fire is $201.70, HIS iSuppli reported. The cost assessment is only for hardware costs and does not include expenditures for software, licensing, or royalties.
Amazon sells the Kindle fire for $199, meaning that the company sells the device at a loss, noted Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, teardown services for IHS.
“Amazon makes its money not on Kindle hardware, but on the paid content and other products it plans to sell the consumer through the Kindle,” Rassweiler said.
The cost of touch screen and display totals $87 and accounts for 46.9 percent of the BOM. The display is supplied by LG Display and E Ink Holdings. The display uses E Ink’s FFS technology, which LG Display has licensed. The touch screen is used by little-known supplier Ilitek.
IHS iSuppli reported that the use of an unfamiliar source for the touch screen controller integrated circuit (IC) on new electronic devices is a trend in the industry. There is booming demand for touch screen devices and many IC suppliers have jumped into the business.
The media tablet also has about $22.10 of NAND flash memory and DRAM which represents 11.9 percent of the BOM. The device is equipped with 8 gigabytes of NAND and 4 gigabits of DRAM, according to IHS iSuppli. Memory ICs are multi-sourced suppliers include Samsung, Elpida, and Hynix.
The cost of the applications processor is $14.65 which accounts for 7.9 percent of the Kindle Fire’s BOM. The processor is Texas Instruments’ TI OMAP4430 chip. TI also supplies other devices for the Kindle Fire including the power management device and the audio codec. This gives TI a total of $24 per each Kindle, or 12.9 percent of the BOM, according to IHS iSuppli.
