Much has been said about the Segway. The WSJ just wrote about how Segway sales are booming.

I am curious as to why the price has stayed at 5,000 since 2001. The basic materials cost of the Segway are quite low. Beyond having some fancy gyroscopes the Segway is just a few pounds of metal, a bit of rubber, some computer chips, software and two tires. Perhaps the Segway company has a lot of R&D they need to amortize before they can start to drop the price.

There is a guy who even built a copy of Segway, and he has an excellent website to show how he did it. At the end of his webpage there are some very good links. He even built a self-balancing unicycle.

So back to the price staying steady: a laptop that cost $2000 in 2001 is available at $200 now. TV’s are so much cheaper, as is wiring, hard drives, etc., etc. Basically, all the electronic components that make up the Segway magic are now cheaper.

So, why has the price of the Segway not dropped?

I hope Segway is not following the Apple pricing model. That pricing nearly killed Apple. Apple had a lot of things to recommend their computers other than being a productivity machine. Cool factor, music, reliability, ease of use, etc. There is not much you can do with a Segway other than ride it around, meaning there are no other drivers to making a Segway sale.

Imagine how many Segways would sell if the price were to come down to $3000 or even $1,999.