The 'true cost to produce' only has to do with determining the 'floor
selling price'.  The actual selling price may have little or nothing to do
with 'true cost to produce'.  The purpose of a business is to maximize
profits, if it doesn't it probably won't be around long.

Ron

Prices today have nothing to do with what something costs to make. It is has
to do with what the company thinks they can get the customer to pay. The old
days of recovering the cost to make plus 2 or 3 percent profit is long gone.
Today's way is only going to get worse as large corporations or only happy
when they have major profit increases from year to year even if such a thing
is not reasonable to expect. They will screw whoever they have to to do
this. That can mean screwing the customers or screwing the employees.

=(8)

Perhaps not.  But the the R&D for the 6 MP sensors has already been long
paid for, and I'll bet Sony has tons of them sitting around that they
are happy to sell for very little just to make sure they get *something*
for them.  Whereas the 10 MP sensots may be new enough that we're still
paying for R&D, and there is not yet an excess inventory to get rid of.

---------------
Marc Sabatella
marc@outsideshore.com

Music, art,  & educational materials
Featuring "A Jazz Improvisation Primer"
http://www.outsideshore.com/

I can never tell if you're just trolling, or truly ignorant about the
subjects of your posts.
The prices of DSLRs are set by the marketing departments, not the
engineering departments. While engineering and marketinmg collaberate
to determine which features will be included in the offerings, the
marketing department decides how much the buyer will be charged for
those features.
And a lot goes into the decision about final price; not just how long
to take to amortize the tooling and R&D, but just how much they think
the buyer will pay for each feature set.
As well, because the D40x is newer than the D40, there's a premium for
that, too.
How much it takes to "divy up a piece of silicon into 10 megapixels
rather than 6" is only a very small part of this process.
Fads (or the perception of fads) also plays a large part; the current
"megapixel race", for example, puts a premium on more pixels, whether
they are a good thing or not (see "pet rocks").

You try to pass yourself off as being knowledgable about things, yet
you are fairly consistant in starting threads about which you have not
even a passing knowledge, while posing a question so that it appears
you do.