Not so much priced like a Nexus, as priced fairly. The specs are clearly mid-range. Analysts have estimated BOM costs at around $225. So let's even add another $25 for American labour (though I doubt it would be that much). That's $250. Let's add a further 20% margin, just because the analysts could be horribly wrong estimating the price of components that are for the most part a year old. That's $300. Applying some other costs and assuming at least a 20% margin would yield a retail price of around $399. Max.
It's not the price that people are disappointed on. It's the value proposition. It should have been $0 on contract with customization. Or $300-$400 off-contract.
Quite frankly, I think it's insulting to the general public that Motorola thinks they are such dunces that they will pay exorbitant prices for "Made in America" and colours. I will lose my faith in my southern neighbours if this phone succeeds in the USA.
BOM: $225.
Research and Development: few million a year for many years.
Buying large stock of parts: Buying millions of phones at once using a special loan from a bank (no one uses their own money). That's about $225 x for say a predicted run of 5,000,000 in the coming months to a year. That is $1,125,000,000 with a interest rate of let's sa 1.1%-6% (I can't give specifics but last I checked for laptops, it's in this range though it varies greatly as you can see).
Marketing: Few million every few months.
Tooling costs:
$40,000 for EACH plastic piece to create the tooling.
$50,000-$100,000 for any casting for metal allows. This is tooling only.
$25,000- Skies the limit for CNCing (I don't think there is any on the Moto X).
Keep in mind any change to tooling means you start over in costs, and trust me there was easily millions in tooling for this phone.
Labor costs:
USA: $15~.
They said 2,000 employees at their foth worth factory. That's 2,000 employee's likely at 15/hr or more. Plus taxes, plus healthcare, plus factory insurances (liability for accidents), administrative bills, accounting and more for all of those 2,000 employees.
Since the factory is in the USA: Parts will more than likely charged import duties, transportation costs, and other hassles..
Factory cost: Few tens or hundreds of millions to build. And millions more to maintain.
$600 for a USA Assembled phone in my opinion is an
excellent bargain. Would I buy a Moto X? No, but I can't with good conscious call it overpriced.