[for the benefit of the freedombox list, cc'd here: a discussion is taking place - again - on debian-arm about the cost and availability of ARM-based systems. a chipset has been found which meets eben's criteria in mass-volume. actually, is a whopping 25% _below_ eben's expectations of $20, and is 40% lower than the raspberrypi price, with, being a 1ghz Cortex A8 instead of a 700mhz ARM11, roughly 2 to 2.5x better performance.] On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Phil Endecott <spam_from_debian_arm@chezphil.org> wrote:

lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote:

...

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:37:06PM +0000, Phil Endecott wrote:

...

Why do you think that? I have personally never seen an "Android motherboard" offered for sale at all, let alone for a low price.

The i.MX53 LOCO board has an android BSP available. Does that qualify?

It does to me, but Rob doesn't seem to like these "not mass produced", "relatively expensive" boards; I think his idea of an "android motherboard" is something from a no-name Chinese tablet manufacturer.

i am in touch with such a "no-name" chinese tablet manufacturer. i can negotiate one of those "into existence"... *if* people are willing to commit - publicly so that i can refer the factory to the archives - to buying some. let's work through the costs, and i'll ask the factory to confirm, but it'll be roughly something like this: * the mass-production BOM of a 1ghz Cortex A8 system using the chiprise aka bmorn aka allwinner SoC will be - literally - around the $15 mark. * morphing the "Reference Board Design" into a "FreedomBox-like" device will be about 10 days @ $150 per day (NOT $150 per hour, REALLY $150 per day). * back-caclulating that cost to include it in to the first.. say... 100 units, that's $15 extra per unit. * scaling up on the BOM to 100-only quantities, you prooobbbably need to add about 60% to 70%. * $15 * 1.7 = $25.50 plus $15 amortised over 100 units is $40. * add a reasonable profit margin - say 25% (that's *really* generous btw), that's now $50. * $50 plus shipping, tax and a box, that's about $80 to get it into your hands. $80 is still a f*** of a lot lower than $125 *excluding* shipping for a beagleboard. and, once it hits mass-production and goes world-wide, that $80 becomes about $35, and if you do a "Special FreedomBox Special Order" of 100,000 units, that $35 becomes about $25 *including* shipping and tax. so it's up to you, folks. if you want to see something like this happen, you have to say so. btw - if you want to take over negotiations with the factory, i am quite happy to put anyone who wishes to take over in touch with the factory. i will give you their email address, you can talk directly with them. l. _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE