Are you saying the cost of an item is what all the individual components are priced at, plus someone assembling them? Because that is around 10% of the retail price of an item. If I have to design an item which retails at (say) £100, they will be sold by the manufacturer at approximately £25. In turn, it will cost the company around £10 in components and assembly. All the rest is development (quite a small percentage), marketing, administration, management, storage, support, power, light, heat, legal services... You get the idea.
There is an old saying "Knowing where to tap". If you haven't heard it before, please Google it.
Anyway, thanks for the teardown. I have a Tektronix DMM4020 5.5 digit bench meter in for test and evaluation (this is a rebadged Fluke 8808a) and am reluctant to remove the covers and break the cal seals. From what I can see through the side vents, they share a common architecture. It also uses an LM399H precision reference and trimmed precision resistors. Next time I have a good look through the vents, I will keep an eye out for any possible FPGAs. I cannot see any patch wires, and from memory the PCB is revision 10, so it has probably been around in one form or another for some time.