Order of Magnitude Cost to Ship an iOS Bluetooth Accessory

Question

This is a request for guidance regarding Bluetooth accessory development for iOS devices.

Publicly available documentation/discussion seems limited; I assume this is due to the MFI NDA.

And I didn't find the quantity/variety of iOS Bluetooth accessories I'd expect if accessory development was as accessible as iOS development in general. So I assume there is substantial overhead in shipping MFI accesories.

My question is: what was the magnitude of overhead to get your first MFI accesory prototype shipped (MFI fees, legal, dev hardware, etc)? I'm looking for the accessory-specific component of costs, so above and beyond the normal iOS software development work.

$1,000?
$10,000?
$100,000?

If NDAs preclude answering, perhaps you could offer guidance about where I can ask general questions like this (DTS ticket?) prior to incurring MFI enrollment expenses.

Answer 1

Update for this:

CoreBluetooth is a new public framework in iOS 5; no MFI required: http://lists.apple.com/archives/bluetooth-dev/2011/Nov/msg00001.html

Note that CoreBluetooth is just for Bluetooth Low Energy, the old BT stuff covered by the MFI still appears to be restricted. The only iOS device shipping with BLE support is the iPhone 4S.

For a working iOS implementation (and hardware dev kit): http://www.ti.com/tool/ble-stack

Answer 2

Building iPhone OS Accessories by Ken Maskrey is a good read and probably the most detailed account of the MFi program you'll get outside of the NDA. It answers most of the questions you've posed.

Answer 3

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I am developing a BT MFi accesory, and I'd say the cost is at least 10,000$ to get a prototype. Also, there is only one solution available, from CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) and support is very limited regarding BLuetooth. It costs an extra 3,000$ to get full Bluetooth support, so unless you know what you're doing, it will cost A LOT.

Plus, there are the license fees, the royalties, and so on, when you sell the product.

On the news side of things, Apple has recognized this BT accesory thing is not working that well for them, so they are almost dropping the royalty fee! However, that is not my job - I'm an engineer.

PS: I am open to private messages on this issue ;)