Accelerometer pricing.

[phil from seattle]

This is half rant, half question.  I've been researching/experimenting with accelerometers to add to various projects I want to do and found some very strange pricing on some of them. 

Basically, you can buy a small board with an accelerometer and a few other parts for not much more than the cost of the bare IC. This isn't just a china thing either.  An example: Sparkfun sells an H3LIS331DL breakout board for $9.95 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14480).  The cost from all the major Distis in the thousands quantities is around $6.  A number of others are like that, too.  Clearly SFE is getting much, much better pricing than that, I'd guess less than a dollar.  That's not the only one. Yet other manufacturers's accelerometers with similar capabilities go for $1 Q1 from the same distis.  Doesn't make sense to me. Are the makers going the route of pharmaceutical pricing? (list super high, negotiate everything)

Fortunately, there are plenty of choices at the $1 Q1 price point. The Kionix KX122-1037 cost me $0.89 each Q10.  It has a bit of an offset that's easy to compensate for but otherwise it's a perfectly fine chip.

And, of course, all the accs appear to be going to a 2x2 LGA package with 12 or 16 .25 mm x .275 mm pads. The chip is about one quarter the size of a grain of rice. But then, what would life be with out challenges?

[Jeroen3]

Maybe sparkfun gets them a bit better, say 4-5$, that still leaves 5$ for board, assembly testing and packaging.
I’m not a pricing expert, but for a board where you can put many on a frame, I’d think it could work.

[phil from seattle]

If they have $5 in parts costs alone, they are losing money.   Plus, they have similar pricing on breakouts where the parts do cost <$1 in 1000s quantity.

[texaspyro]

I bought some 10 axis IMU boards off Ebay for $12 each.  The MS barometer chip alone sells for $36 on DigiKey.

[phil from seattle]

For a while now, I've suspected there is some sort of "Chinese discount" going on. Even the 1000s disti pricing is still more than the cost of buying a board like that off ebay/aliX/... I know the Chinese take slim margins but they aren't going to sell it for more than it costs to make it.

[bson]

An example: Sparkfun sells an H3LIS331DL breakout board for $9.95 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14480).  The cost from all the major Distis in the thousands quantities is around $6.

$6 for what - the chip or the board?

Mouser sells the chip for $1.24 in 1000s.  $1.07 if you get two full reels of 4000 each.  $2.51 for a single.
https://www.mouser.com/productdetail/stmicroelectronics/lis331dlhtr?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvAvBNgSS9LqglfYWqF%2Fb%2Fr