Even if it were reliably available in such quantities, I'm not sure Pi's pricing would make sense in the context of any mass produced product.

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awjlogan 10 months ago | parent | next [-]

They are available in that quantity. They do make sense up to around that number, although the around 1K is the sweet spot. Laying out and certifying a high speed design (not just a noddy A9 with DDR2) is expensive and it's all NRE cost. The cost of the components for the CM is driven down by the combined volume significantly - if you want to buy 1-10K of those by yourself, you will pay a premium over what RasPi gets them for. You might not need a full 6/8 layer board for the whole product as well. As important, the software support is great as it's just a standard RasPi - you don't have to support your own custom image.

	▲	10 months ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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detaro 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They are far from the most expensive SOMs on the market.

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Joel_Mckay 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Volume pricing on custom commercial Pi SoM are not common, but do happen at the Pi foundation.

I have seen 3 or 4 products with these pi+Debian SoMs running network services etc. Getting them to be reliable is a different set of issues with dozens of edge cases, but its the same with every other vendor. Best regards =3

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pyb 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are apparently products based on the CM (Ableton Move?), not sure how they sell these at a profit.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 10 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Design for Manufacturability paradigms sometimes generate odd choices that only make sense in certain use-cases. When scaling up to over 50k pcs/month the incremental costs do get ugly fast. However, for many of the same reasons a 3k USD PLC makes sense in many low volume long-tale market applications (i.e. pre-certified and stamped hardware.) Best of luck, =3
	▲	hobofan 10 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Formlabs Form 4 uses a CM AFAIK and at a 4-5k price point it's not hard to see how they sell them at a profit.

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eptcyka 10 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Mass producers do not buy at retail prices.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 10 months ago \| parent [-]
		Sometimes we do, but it hits both us and the end customer. Recall the chip shortages... =3