Over the last week I've spent a fair bit of time reading and digesting the thoughts in various bullish and bearish analyst reports on Research In Motion. I noticed that most analysts seemed to be estimated BlackBerry 10 hardware to sell for about $400. This figure, known in the industry as ASP (Average Selling Price) is the price device manufacturers sell to operators at. It is NOT the retail price you pay for an unlocked phone.
RIM's current portfolio ASP is just under $229, and the average device cost is actually closer to $240-250, so they're losing money on hardware. Keep in mind this cost calculation fully absorbs all costs that RIM must account for in reporting numbers. It's not just a bill of materials as given in a teardown analysis.
Anyway, I had a hard time believing that RIM would actually sell BlackBerry 10 hardware for only $400, and I was fairly vocal about it on a few blog posts. Then we saw at least one analyst publicly estimate a $450 ASP.
Since then, I've come across two data points to support the idea that a $400 ASP for BlackBerry 10 is totally out to lunch.