I posted something like this elsewhere, but... From a recent semiconductor industry report, the latest NAND Flash spot prices (2/5/07) are:
2Gb... $2.6
4Gb... $3.9
8Gb... $6.3
Assuming the same ~1.6x-ish price increment for each doubling of capacity:
16Gb... $10
32Gb... $16
Times 8 to get GB gives me a rough estimate of $128 for the NAND chips in the 32GB drive. Add a bit more for the other hardware and contract pricing and a cost of $160 for the storage portion of a 32GB flash iPod at current prices isn't too bad. Note that prices will fall by "later this year". I'd guess a starting list price of over $300, for which you'd get the slim design, better battery life and probably, bigger screen (maybe even some iPhone design elements).
I'd guess that they will add support for hybrid disk drives in Leopard. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced new hardware to demo the capabilities (instant boot/sleep, lower power consumption, blah blah blah) at the same time.
If I'm reading the lastest NAND spot prices correctly, it costs ~$20/gigabyte after the recent drop. That would put a 32gb drive at $640+cost of other components and assembly. I'd safely guess that we're actually talking about less than $500 for the drive when it hits the market.
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I posted something like this elsewhere, but... From a recent semiconductor industry report, the latest NAND Flash spot prices (2/5/07) are: 2Gb ... $2.6
4Gb ... $3.9
8Gb ... $6.3
Assuming the same ~1.6x-ish price increment for each doubling of capacity:
16Gb ... $10
32Gb ... $16
Times 8 to get GB gives me a rough estimate of $128 for the NAND chips in the 32GB drive. Add a bit more for the other hardware and contract pricing and a cost of $160 for the storage portion of a 32GB flash iPod at current prices isn't too bad. Note that prices will fall by "later this year". I'd guess a starting list price of over $300, for which you'd get the slim design, better battery life and probably, bigger screen (maybe even some iPhone design elements).
I'd guess that they will add support for hybrid disk drives in Leopard. I wouldn't be surprised if they introduced new hardware to demo the capabilities (instant boot/sleep, lower power consumption, blah blah blah) at the same time.
If I'm reading the lastest NAND spot prices correctly, it costs ~$20/gigabyte after the recent drop. That would put a 32gb drive at $640+cost of other components and assembly. I'd safely guess that we're actually talking about less than $500 for the drive when it hits the market.