Re: [OT]What's the price index of your laptop's battery?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> Would you ever buy a car -- or even a mobile phone -- where the spare/
>> replacement battery cost 14% of the entire car/phone retail price? Say 

Actually, with hybrid cars, the battery cost is pretty high as well.

Batteries in laptops are very important: longer autonomy is an important
selling point, so laptop manufacturers try to get the very best battery
they can afford without making the laptop ruinous or dangerous.  So it's
no surprise the cost is high.

> All this in mind, you might still have a valid point that prices for
> spare batteries for laptops are too high. This is not a truly free
> market, since there are too many different types of batteries, posing a
> high barrier for market entry, and manufacturers try to impose a kind of
> monopoly for replacement batteries (quite similar to the situation of
> replacement ink cartridges).

Actually, there is a thriving market for third-party suppliers of
replacement batteries.  Those typically cost around half the price of
the official manufacturer's battery.  That price is usually pretty hard
to beat, because the price of the battery cells is actually pretty high,
so even if you make your own battery, you won't pay much less (the price
of the raw cells is easily about half the price of a third-party
battery).


        Stefan