You're right, I stand corrected - the iPhone 3G BoM is $175, the iPhone 3GS BoM is $179. Amazing how the retail price difference is so vast yet the cost of components is so similar!

I'm not suggesting companies should not recover their development costs or make a tidy profit, what I do object to is price gouging and while Nokia, Apple, Palm all do it I'm looking forward to the day when real price competition comes to the smartphone market which it will, hopefully, in 2010.

The component cost of the N900 is perhaps closer to $200 and Nokia will make and sell millions as they did with the N97. There's a lot of margin in these products, probably too much is all I'm saying, and while you all accept it as being "ok" and "fair" it will continue, and most likely worsen.

Other MIDs will come to market soon enough that will match the N900 in terms of functionality if not size, using many of the same if not identical components, made by much smaller manufacturers without the same economies of scale than Nokia, and yet they won't cost anything like $700... and each time I see one I will be forced to ask myself - if they can do that for (say, $400) why is the N900 so fecking expensive?