The known Apple journalist John Gruber, says that the Cupertino company would be selling the Apple TV with 4K resolution at cost and that the HomePod smart speaker does not give the firm a profit.
All this and something else is what they say in the program Daring Fireball 's in which Gruber claims that these two products are not profitable at the moment for Apple. Actually, AirPods are also talked about as a device that does not offer benefits to Apple but in this case it cannot demonstrate it and focuses on Apple TVs and HomePods, of which you do have interesting facts to share.
Manufacturing cost, discounts, more logistics, more R&D
Let's start with the HomePod. Everything indicates that the cost of making a HomePod is about $ 216 as they warned on the well-known web MacRumors, so this added to the possible discounts that we find in some stores, the costs of research and development, the creation of software, the costs of shipping and logistics, make the price increase considerably and that is why Gruber says that Apple doesn't make money off the speakers it sells.
When we focus on the Apple TV 4K we realize that this product that was launched in 2017 has a price of 180 dollars in stores, curiously according to Gruber this is the price that Apple pays for its manufacture, shipping and others. In this case we can think that today it is cheaper to manufacture these Apple TV after a couple of years, but even with this they would not gain anything from their sale either. In this talk We also find a reference to the AirPods, the problem that Gruber comments in this case is that no estimated manufacturing prices Despite this, he affirms that they are close to the sale prices.
With all this, what this expert analyst and journalist wants to tell us is that Apple products are not as expensive as they seem, he also explains that other firms save costs in development, design and R&D by copying Apple products, so what to them it is easier to lower prices of your products.