Hardware vs. Software: Cost & Benefits

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Software often costs more than hardware due to the significant investment in development time and resources. Complex applications may require extensive labor, with teams of developers working for years, leading to high costs that need to be recouped through sales. In contrast, hardware development can benefit from economies of scale; a product that sells in large quantities can be priced lower despite high initial development costs. Additionally, software has a unique advantage in that it incurs no manufacturing costs, allowing for lower distribution expenses. This dynamic can result in high prices for specialized software, especially when the market for it is limited.
Ali Inam
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Hi,

What is the reason the most of the time, the software are much more expensive than the hardware components.

If there is any important machine that is worth millions, then why its software is also too much expensive. Is it because of its complicated tasks or is there any other reason ? !
 
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Ali Inam said:
What is the reason the most of the time, the software are much more expensive than the hardware components.
The normal combination of costs and sales.
If a piece of software takes 10people 3years to write I need to get back something like $3M, if it's a specialist app that is only going to sell a few hundred copies, then it's going to be expensive.
If one person writes an iPhone app in three months and hopes to sell a million copies then they can sell it for 99c.

Same with hardware, a CPU might costs $100M to develop but I'm going to sell >100M of them then I can sell it cheaply. But if I build a space station it's going to cost you.

Software does have the unique property that it costs nothing to manufacture, which is why I'm writing this on a free operating system and it's being displayed by a free web server.
 

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