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Ask HN: What is the real cost of electronic components?

1 points by Iulioh ↗ HN
I was wondering what's the real price of electronic components and how is that different from retailers like Mouser or Digikey.

I went with my BOM around and some _unofficial_ websites have really low prices for some components and i was wondering, if i place a really big order (let's say 100k€ worth of components) what would be the discount of these pices? it is still too small to have a discount?

Is there someone inside the industry who can give me a ballpark number?

EDIT: Forgot to say, one of my friends who does reverse enginering said that for some components the """real price""" is 70% of the price on these big websites (at that point you talk with the manufacturer but for me that number is too big)

5 comments

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JohnFen
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the "real price". Companies like Mouser and Digikey charge a premium to be sure, but they also perform a real service for that premium in the form of taking measures to avoid counterfeit and faulty parts. Discount sources (particularly unknown ones) come with a very high chance of selling garbage parts.

How important that is to you depends on your particular needs and situation.

Iulioh
I meant mostly for an industrial scale production.

If i make a million devices i will deal with who produce these components, not with a reseller.

What i would like to know is what margins manufacturers have at this step and what price they proposte versus the one we find on these sites

JohnFen
I'm still confused about what you're asking here.

Buying anything in large quantities gives you a price break, whether directly from the manufacturer or through resellers. You get much better prices directly from the manufacturer because there's no middleman, but you also have much larger minimum order requirements. Resellers primarily exist to serve those who aren't buying parts in extremely large quantities.

They are two different kinds of markets with different needs.

I suspect the only way to answer your question is to actually get quotes from manufacturers for the parts you're interested in and do price comparisons, but I think I don't understand the question so I can't really be of much help here. Sorry.

Iulioh
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I suspect the only way to answer your question is to actually get quotes from manufacturers

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Yes, basically this but I would like to do some "napkin math" using a complete database such a Mouser

Basically a "if it is on mouser speaking with the producers and buying a relevant quantity I will get at least a 30% discount"

fuzzfactor
I like electronics and I think one of the design features that can be desirable in lots of different final products is robustness.

Not just reliability but one of the clear advantages is when your product is highly robust in the face of dramatic price swings for commodity components as well as specialty items like uncommon chips or transformers.

This may not apply to you, but with commodities, for a distributor ideally the internal cost can be zero when the parts are languishing on the shelf after being fully depreciated. Regardless of whether they account for it like that or not. Their pricing can realistically be based on what it costs them to get the parts to you, not what the part cost to acquire in the first place. That can be a lot of leeway, things are not always ideal but maybe more common depending on where you look.