Teardown Sites

Funny thing about the Fitbit teardown:

At 8:20 they talk about the sensors, total price is 2.9 USD

If I just look up the MS5805-02BA altimeter, I get a Digikey price of 4USD, so probably 2 USD in high volume. But that leaves almost nothing left the other 4 components. Seems the pricing is really different that what I am used to seeing.

How do they purchase all those comps for 2.9USD? (granted it is a guess from the IHS guys)

Cheers

Klaus

Check your assumptions. Volume pricing is often (much) less than 50% of DigiKey pricing. I routinely design-in opamps that are about

Maybe our purchasing guys are way off.

If I take high volume prices from Digikey/Findchips and multiply by 60% I often get they quotes that purchasing delivers

Are you really down to 25% of Findchips prices?

Cheers

Klaus

It varies. The opamp I generally use is about 30% of the lowest price there (I negotiated that price over lunch, for which the rep paid ;-). A buck regulator that I use a lot is more like 20% of what I see on Findchips. Other devices may be more like 40%.

BTW, we don't pay DigiKey the Internet price either. I've had purchasing call me ask if they can buy at DigiKey instead of Mouser because it's cheaper, even though the web price was higher. I was told that the web prices are discounted.

We only use digikey for prototypes and for selecting devices (the parametric engine is good)

We buy directly from manufactors for bulk purchase

Cheers

Klaus

Sure, but our prototype run might be 50-100 units. The first "manufacturing samples" would be hundreds to thousands but those parts are bought through the normal channels.

We don't buy everything direct (many manufacturers won't sign the purchasing contracts) but the parts that aren't are just passed though reps. I have no idea why DigiKey discounts their prices for us but evidently they do. They probably do for most large corporations but don't advertise it. I didn't know anything about it until the purchasing agent called me a month or so ago.