Waiting for someone to hack the Shuffle
Analysts at IDC recently took apart an IPod
Shuffle and come up with an estimate of how much the diminutive music
player costs Apple Computer to make. They found that Apple makes a
healthy 35 percent to 40 percent profit on each player sold, and stands
to make even more from ITunes music purchases and expected drops in
flash memory pricing.
[IdaRose Sylvester] estimates the 512MB of flash in the cheaper of Apple’s two IPod Shuffle models
costs the company around $37.50 for each player. That’s about two
thirds of the estimated total $59 that Apple spends on materials needed
to make each 512MB IPod Shuffle. The product retails for $99 giving the
company a profit of about $40, or roughly 40 percent.
The second most expensive single component is
judged by IDC to be the digital music decoder chip, which in the IPod
Shuffle is the STMP3550 chip from SigmaTel. That marks a change from
the hard drive-based IPods which use a chip from Portal Player.
The SigmaTel chip supports MP3 and Windows Media
Audio files, although Apple has programmed it to play the AAC and
Audible music formats, says Sylvester. The chip also includes a
digital-to-analog converter, a controller for the USB2.0 interface,
SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) memory for buffering, and the headphone
driver amplifier. Other functions present in the chip that aren’t used
in the Shuffle include an analog-to-digital convertor for voice
recording, a driver for an LCD, and an FM tuner.