Many of us were in awe and disappointed when the Optimus keyboard was announced to be in black & white along with a price tag of $1200. We knew that it couldn’t be cheap to build these but $1200 for a computer keyboard seemed a little outlandish.
I find reading the Optimus blog to be a lot of fun because there are hardly any companies that clue in the rest of the world on their design process. Now the latest post on the Optimus blog details some of the costs that are associated with the manufacturing of the keyboard:
For the Optimus-103 OLEDs have to be custom-made. We have to choose the manufacturer next week (there are some of them), define the specs and finance every production stage including the tooling. Tooling itself costs a minimum of US$70-100k. Production cycle takes at least three months. Every display costs about US$10. Multiply that by the number of active keys.
Remember that the $10 is not for all 103 keys because the “space bar, return, both shifts, numeric keypad, the arrow keys and some other keys of secondary importance” will just be backlit to save some money. That right there knocks off about 25 OLEDs ($250 in parts) that would be needed.
There is no way that I could afford the $1200 for the keyboard, which is what the black & white version was said to cost, but I am sure over the years that the price will continue to fall as the parts become cheaper to manufacture. Look back at how expensive laptops and plasma/LCD televisions were a few years ago and then it is obvious that this technology will follow a similar path.
The problem is the OLED technology is still in its infancy. And because of that the production costs will be high. The longer a technology has been around the more efficient the production process becomes and the cheaper the parts will become over time, which is the reason prices drop significantly with any new technology over time.
Another issue the OLED technology has, is that it is still quite early in development and implementation. I remembering reading a few months ago that the lifespan of OLED displays are a little over 1 year. Surely that may have increased some since I read that, but either way…If I am to pay out even a few hundred dollars for a laptop like this, I expect that it last me at lest 3 years. I am curious to what kind of warranty they will give this keyboard.
In any case, they have simply jumped the gun in implementing a technology that is not well established yet. This could hurt them in the long run, especially with the surely unexpected attention it got through the Internet (especially as it hit Digg).
I wouldn’t suggest anyone buy this keyboard right away, even if your willing to pay the ($1,200) price for it, as the technology’s lifespan is weak and it’s production (and thus retail) price is high because the technology is still in it’s infancy.
Wow, never thought about the lifespan that this thing would have. I sure hope that they would have thought about that but I guess that is why they are making it easy to replace the individual keys.