[patrickyeon]

This is unfortunately the current state of consumer hardware: "monthly recurring revenue" is the number everyone chases, subscriptions are the hotness, and you sell hardware as a loss leader to get people hooked on the subscription. Customers aren't a community you're creating, nor people you serve, they're a natural resource from which you extract dollars.

It's hard to compete against this. If you try to sell hardware at an honest cost, you'll likely be the more expensive option (or you can price-match but you'll have to reduce your quality) and the vast majority of consumer decision making is driven by the immediate price tag.

It's even worse if you're in the venture-funded world. Money is cheap and you're rewarded in the short run by how many "customers" you have, not whether they can be turned into customers whe pay you more than it costs to acquire them.