Actually, my calculations were based on using XT-Es, not XP-Es. I fixed the typo in my post. XP-Es are inherently much more costly than XT-Es. You can definitely get the worst bin XT-Es for slightly under $1 in bulk (5000s). We're obviously dealing with much larger quantities here, and Cree avoids two sets of middlemen, themselves and the distributor, which would increase the costs for anyone else making a lamp like this.
Thinking about the price, a possibility is both Cree and Home Depot might be selling the lamp at cost just to undercut everyone else. Or perhaps Cree is using the sales of bare LEDs to cover for short-term losses in the A19 retrofit market. Either one might actually be a smart business strategy. By the time everyone else loses a significant market share, Cree's production costs will have dropped so that it might make a good profit even lowering the retail price to $10 because it has volume on its side. There will be plenty of niche markets for A19 lamps with high CRI, or CCTs other than 2700K or 5000K, for the other manufacturers. Cree seems to be interested mainly in the high-volume products.
So I received mine today, measured them, tore them open, and found what made them tick. I think Cree and HD are selling these close to cost based on the insides (so sell your stock as they can't be making enough profit to justify their P/E ratio!).
The 60W warm white has 20 LED packages. Each has 4 die mounted to an aluminum nitride substrate of the XT-E footprint but with different circuitry. This seems to be something they only make for themselves (and it'd probably make a poor solution for anything other than stuffing behind a diffuser). The die are about 610 um x 610 um, making each package have 1.44mm^2 of die and the total lamp die area being about 29mm^2. That's a lot of epi and is probably about 3 bucks. Add on the package substrate, the phosphors, the silicone lens, the manufacturing and test, etc. and these things have to be north of $10 to make. Then you package them, pay UPS freight to get them to HD, stock them, sell them to me at $12, ship them to me in CA from MD, and you can't have made any money on this... anyone know if they are using this in their new troffers?
The 40W and the 60W each have 10 XT-E HVW 24V packages in them. They have 8 DA3547 die per package, or ~1.3mm^2. Total lamp epi is 13mm^2, or slightly more than an MT-G2. Again, they've utilized the XT-E footprint but with different circuitry. All LEDs are in series, meaning one die opens up and the whole thing goes dead.
None of the lamps had stellar efficiency LEDs in them given the low drive current, but the driver was freakin' incredible. It outputs 224VDC to the LED strings at 93% efficiency! If you bust open your globe, be careful as you're working with some dangerous voltages here. Lots of electrolytic caps and the driver didn't look all that inexpensive to make. Probably $2? Reliability should be interesting for these, especially in enclosed fixtures.
No mention of useability in enclosed fixtures on the packaging.
Anyone else have any fun with these?