Wow, that's better than I expected! So maybe a resale market could develop on Craigslist or whatever. Buy one, get your data, clean and wipe it thoroughly, and then resell it. Maybe the refurbished price would stabilize at $500 or whatever.
- You'll probably need more than one flow cell (which is used up during sequencing) for a human genome
- The flow cells make up the bulk of the price, costing ~$800 in single unit quantities
- You have to send in used flow cells for refurbishing (which is how they can make them as cheap)
So the $1000 is more or less already the refurbished price.
There also doesn't seem to be any significant competition, as Oxford Nanopore has a very broad patent portfolio surrounding their tech.