AFAIC, the current $429 price was put in place in September 2009.
So it dropped >1/2 in <2 years, and from 400 to 100 is just 2 halvings, or ~4 years.
I expect that it will be technically feasible to offer <$100 SNP analysis on 23andMe’s current scale (>=550k SNPs), but the determinant will be business factors—what’s profit-maximizing? Do they have the resources to scale to demand at <$100? etc.
I think they will (lots of people and equipment being liquidated in the biotech sector will help them), and have made a prediction for during 2014: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1677
Update: sometime in the past 3 or 4 weeks, 23andMe dropped its price to $259.
2011 has just arrived, and we only need one more halving or a sale to match this prediction! 5 years seems likely to have been surprisingly pessimistic.
There is a 5 dollar/month subscription fee on top of that, which has to be paid for at least a year after the purchase. That makes the total minimum price 259 dollars (not significantly higher, I concur).
Oh, true enough. I mistakenly thought that the $200 had dropped the required subscription and was why it was more expensive than the previous $120*+subscription offer. I’ll edit my comment...
* Or whatever the sale in the past month or two was
Thanks for posting this! I read your post at 4:00 pm PDT, so I made it just in time. My wife and I each ordered a kit.
$100 will probably be the normal price in 5 years or less, but it is fun to find this stuff out.
5 years may or may not be too far out. In November 2007, after all, it was a cool $1000: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html
AFAIC, the current $429 price was put in place in September 2009.
So it dropped >1/2 in <2 years, and from 400 to 100 is just 2 halvings, or ~4 years.
I expect that it will be technically feasible to offer <$100 SNP analysis on 23andMe’s current scale (>=550k SNPs), but the determinant will be business factors—what’s profit-maximizing? Do they have the resources to scale to demand at <$100? etc.
I think they will (lots of people and equipment being liquidated in the biotech sector will help them), and have made a prediction for during 2014: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1677
Update: sometime in the past 3 or 4 weeks, 23andMe dropped its price to $259.
2011 has just arrived, and we only need one more halving or a sale to match this prediction! 5 years seems likely to have been surprisingly pessimistic.
Yep, down to $99 on 11 December 2012.
Does that include subscription? I remember that being a serious problem with earlier sales and pricings, it wasn’t really $99.
There is a 5 dollar/month subscription fee on top of that, which has to be paid for at least a year after the purchase. That makes the total minimum price 259 dollars (not significantly higher, I concur).
Oh, true enough. I mistakenly thought that the $200 had dropped the required subscription and was why it was more expensive than the previous $120*+subscription offer. I’ll edit my comment...
* Or whatever the sale in the past month or two was
You were correct; it dropped to $99 in about 2 and a half years.