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Apple's Secret Weapon To Influence Industry Pricing
Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Wingfield writes in the NY Times that Apple's present pricing strategy is a big change from the 1990s, when consumers regarded Apple as a producer of overpriced tech baubles, unable to compete effectively with its Macintosh family of computers against the far cheaper Windows PCs. Now within the premium product categories where Apple is most at home, comparable devices often do no better than match or slightly undercut Apple's prices. 'They're not cheap, but I don't think they're viewed as high-priced anymore,' says Stewart Alsop. Winfield writes that Apple uses its growing manufacturing scale and logistics prowess to deliver Apple products at far more aggressive prices, which in turn gives it more power to influence pricing industrywide, and one of Apple's pricing secrets has been it's willingness to tap into its huge war chest — $82 billion in cash and marketable securities last quarter — to take big gambles by locking up supplies of parts for years."
Really? The iMac is reaching end of release cycle, so isn't at its peak of value, but...
27" iMac built from scratch (prices from newegg):
27" 2560x1440 S-IPS monitor including camera: $999 (from apple, 1099 if you buy it from dell)
i5 2300: $179.99
DH67GD: $102.99
2x2GB DDR3 1333: $22.99
1TB 7200rpm HDD: $139.99
Radeon 6670 (aproximating the speed of the 6770m here): $79.99
Corsair CX430 PSU: $44.99
Antec 300: $69.99
Total: $1639.93
Apple's price: $1699
That really doesn't look like too bad to me. Were you by any chance ignoring the price of a 2560x1440 S-IPS monitor when you were finding they cost twice the price?
Aside –the system built here will be significantly louder than an iMac too, and significantly bulkier. Factoring that in, I'm sure we can forgive apple $60 at the end of their release cycle ;)