IHS’ Glass Teardown Suggests Its Hardware Costs Just $152.47, Google Begs to Differ

About two weeks ago we told you about a Google Glass teardown that revealed its hardware to be priced at just $79.78. Now we have another one made by IHS that comes with a different price of $152.47, which is still very low compared to the $1,500 Explorers have to pay.

IHS agrees with what I’ve told you in my previous editorial about the teardown, stating that expenses may come from engineering costs, software development, and other non-material costs.

Google has disagreed with IHS’ estimation of the hardware price, declaring that its “wildly off”. The Google spokesman declared that Glass is much more expensive to produce than that.

While the $1,500 price tag seems extremely high, there are a lot of reasons for it and I believe Google’s research costs in order to develop an entirely new product are huge. They might not recover their investment for many years now even if they kept this price.

But Google’s declaration proves us that both IHS And Teardown.com got their component prices wrong and Glass might be much more expensive, even setting apart the other non-material costs. This comes as bad news for enthusiasts that are waiting for a much cheaper customer edition device that is expected to be released later this year.

Previous rumors indicated that Google might sell Glass for just $300 this year, but lately we have proofs that they were wrong. New sources suggest that Google might set its price to $600, which seems more realistic, but now we aren’t sure if even this price can be achieved by the company.

Google Glass is currently available for everyone in the US and it doesn’t require an invitation anymore, as we’ve told you in a previous article. I don’t believe Google is planning to keep this version as the customer edition, but, as they called it, it’s now an open beta as they get closer to a final version, suitable for the general public.