[waterhouse23]

The reason they chose this Broadcom part is because they could get it cheap from Broadcom (founders have an association with Broadcom).

So, basically it was a political choice to use this part. I think it also helped Broadcom sell a part which wasn't hugely popular.

[Nexxxeh]

I think goven the origin story of the Pi, "political" implies something that wasn't there. The Pi was want expected to be the huge success it has been.

They weren't sure they'd sell 1000 initially, and 10,000 was crazy dream. It wasn't conceived as the next wave of hacker and maker computers. Its goal was to be a cheap and accessible way to teach kids programming.

Eben Upton was an SoC architect at Broadcom and was working there full time, and when the Pi was designed they thought they'd shift 1000 units of the end product. Why on Earth would they use anything other than the Broadcom?

It was a practical and logistical choice.

[joezydeco]

Broadcom has no interesting in selling parts to anyone unless you're moving millions of handsets a year.

Other manufacturers use cheap dev boards as a way to seed sales with manufacturers (e.g. Pandaboard or Beaglebone), but RPi was not one of them.