Now that people are pretty clear on whether or not the P1 will actually ship, one of the big questions remaining is, how much will it cost? There are lots of factors that should make the P1 a "consumer" portable, such as flashy style, ease of use, and an enclosure that can take a beating-- but the most important issue would have to be price. After all, would the iMac have been nearly as popular with first-time buyers if it had cost, say, $1599? One of the big draws was that, while there were definitely cheaper machines to be had, the iMac gave a lot of bang for the buck. In the portable market, there's even a bigger opening for Apple; there really aren't any consumer-targeted laptops out there right now, because laptops are still the domain of businesspeople on the go. Apple can change all that, if they can just hit a reasonable price point.

Unfortunately, most sources indicate that Steve Jobs' goal of making the P1 a sub-$1000 system just wasn't feasible. We've seen price estimates running anywhere from $1199 to nearly $1600, based on the rumored specifications and what the market will bear, and personally, we think $1600 is above the threshold for widespread market acceptance. Worse yet, the PowerBook Zone has calculated their own estimated P1 price based on the production numbers that manufacturer Alpha Top has recently stated, and if correct, this doesn't bode well: Alpha Top claims that they expect to produce 200,000 P1s by the end of the year for a total cost to them of $375 million. Fire up Calculator and you see that breaks down to $1875 per unit. Throw in Apple's margin and you're looking at a selling price of $1999 or higher.

That's not a good price point for what's supposed to a consumer machine; heck, you can get a discontinued PowerBook G3/266 at the Apple Store for that price. We've just got to assume that Alpha Top's numbers were misreported-- or maybe they weren't talking in U.S. currency. 1875 Taiwanese dollars is apparently under $600 U.S., but that seems too low, if anything. If they were correct, and they were speaking in Taiwanese currency, then maybe the P1 will be super-cheap after all... Oooo, the suspense is killing us. ;-)

UPDATE: Ooopsy, looks like we missed a decimal point in the conversion rates-- "under $600" was technically correct, but "way under $600" would have been much more accurate; if Alpha Top's numbers were in Taiwanese currency, the production cost of the P1 would be about $80 in good ol' U.S. funds. Now that's a laptop priced for consumers! Where do we sign up?