The Palm Pre is definitely one of the most sexy, sleek devices soon to be widely available on planet Earth and will undoubtedly have it competing with the iPhone, G1 and G2. While nobody (who hasn’t signed an NDA) knows how much the Palm Pre will cost consumers, early estimates from iSuppli are suggesting it costs Palm $138 to manufacture the Pre.

iSuppli also says they expect Palm to charge Sprint $300 for each device and expect Sprint to sell the Pre to consumers for $200. That $100 “loss” is easily made up in the cost of service over a 2-year period. To put this in perspective, iSupplie pinpointed the iPhone at $174 manufacturing cost and the G1 at $144. So how do they arrive at these costs?

Usually they take a physical product and open up all the guts to analyze and price but as you know, nobody has the Pre. So this $138 figure is more of an estimate than anything but based on their history I’m guessing it is pretty accurate. Here are some numbers from the report:

• $11 applications chip from Texas Instruments
• $39.51 for the display
• $15.96 for 8GB flash memory
• $15.41 for Qualcomm wireless components
• $12.39 3MP camera from Aptina (Micron Technology)
• $22.61 for software licensing and royalties

That doesn’t add up to the $138 but those are the major items making up the bulk of the manufacturing costs. And remember, these costs include assembly and transportation of supplies and all of that good stuff.

Are you surprised the Pre costs less than the iPhone and G1 to manufacture? I’m not. I think the most innovative thing about the actual hardware is the shape of the Pre, which I absolutely love. Beyond that it is all about the software. WebOS FTW!

[Via BusinessWeek]