[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]+1. Down the road, this will be about $150-200 max unlocked. citation]
I don't think that's correct. Smart phones are pretty advanced pieces of hardware, due to the level of minaturization, and are not cheap to make. I'm guessing actual manufacturing cost is somewhere near the 5-600$ range, as they usually have the computing power a little below a netbook, and are massively minituarized
When selling an unlocked phone the manufacturer isn't getting any subsidies from the provider (ATT/Verzn), the only income is from the sale itself. For google to ever sell this phone at 200$ would mean either
a) They are loosing massive amounts of money on each phone.
b) They are trying to get rid of obsolete inventory
c) Somehow prices miraculously dropped on the hardware due to other developments.
I'm guessing that smartphone manufacturers do actually take a loss on unlocked phones, simply to increase market penetration, but I doubt that they would ever take a hit that large.
b is a likely scenario, but only after the next gen comes out and only for a little while
c is unlikely, because if some major manufacturing improvement occured then, while prices could drop, the smartphone manufacturers would maintain the price point but seriously increase the quality instead, creating a new gen, which goes back to point b.