In Search of the iPod

To me, the most interesting thing about this effort to figure out who makes the iPod (via Brad DeLong) is less its conclusions -- the biggest share of the revenue, $80, goes to Apple for designing and conceiving of the thing, while "Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod" -- than for how difficult the task is.

Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Jason Dedrick all from UC Irvine and doing research supported by the Sloan Foundation (full disclosure: my uncle is taking over in January) looked into where the $299 retail 30 gig iPod Video comes from and ended up with $110 dollars in "unaccounted-for parts and labor costs" which is a pretty huge proportion of the total. To make a long story short, then, nobody really knows where it came from and its extremely difficult to figure it out.

Photo by Flickr user Kelly Chan used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

One word: Aliens.

Posted by Ugh | June 28, 2007 10:27 AM

the latest version of the 30 gig video iPod came out retailing for $249. i bought one right away, it wasn't a sale price.

Posted by itsbenj | June 28, 2007 11:28 AM

Back in the old days -- say 10 years ago -- you'd pop open the box of a new Mac and the first thing you'd see is, "Made in the U.S.A.".

What a disaster our current trade scheme has been to this country.

Posted by leo | June 28, 2007 11:59 AM

I'm pretty sure Apple knows the answer. And I'm also pretty sure that they have no interest in revealing their trade secrets.

Posted by blah | June 28, 2007 1:11 PM