[ksec]

A saving of $100 from BOM would translate to $200 reduction in SRP. Remember this isn't just CPU, but CPU + Chipset and other smaller components.

Apple could easily make that saving and more. You can also look at iPad Pro selling price as reference.

[beagle3]

This. Also, there is a possibility Apple is willing to forego some profit (make only 70% rather than 100% profit) as a strategy to seed the market in order to give developers an incentive to adopt ARM faster.

[tonyedgecombe]

Their push into services would be helped by having more volume products. I'm suspect this is why the iPhone SE was priced so low.

[valuearb]

They already have distributed cheap developer machines.

And their profit on Mac hardware is only 15-20%. You may price at double build costs, but there is still design, R&D, testing, sales, marketing, distribution, support, warranty costs and admin overhead to be accounted for.