iLounge is reporting that high costs may be hampering Apple’s AirPlay and Thunderbolt from growing more quickly in the third-party market.
According to the site, adding AirPlay to a speaker set adds as much as $100 per unit to the cost, much more than using Apple’s Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad Dock Connectors.
Likewise, the super fast Thunderbolt IO technology is also expensive to use. iLounge reports that adding Thunderbolt ports to a drive enclose can cost as much as a low-end hard drive. However, the cost may be worth it. Today, LaCie’s Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt got shown off, with write speeds up to 352.5 MB/s and read speeds of 827.2 MB/s.
As with most technologies, costs should come down over time, but if the initial price is too big of a hurdle, Apple may have to re-work plans for future adoption.
Source: iLounge
