[joshvm]

I think for many people cost is the most important factor. People who bought the RPi did so because it was so cheap that it was practically an impulse purchase.

Disregarding the actual device price, the other issue here is the expensive module pricing. Let's face it, if you're buying this because you want to do things the simple way then you're going to be buying modules. Ambient light + MicroSD card? That'll be $50 please. Too many electronics outfits shaft consumers like this and too many electronics hobbyists put up with it.

[antsar]

Taking into account the value of one's time, maybe paying $50 for a pair of modules rather than taking the time to discover how to build them from scratch is a worthwhile spend? Enough hobbyists seem to think so, based on the success of these businesses.

[joezydeco]

The volume cost of parts that make smartphones, remote controls, wifi dongles, etc so darn cheap for the average consumer do not scale downward when you're only making 100 or 1000 of something.

[joshvm]

It contains a grand total of three components, the only one costs anything is the SD slot. At 100 units, they're about 50c each. The other components cost nothing, relatively, you can buy a thousand resistors for a dollar. The board itself would cost under a dollar to make at anything above 10 units. Total cost is about $2 if we're stretching.

I ran a quote for an assembly house, and for 100 boards it would cost around $200 or $2 a board - so now it's $4. Standard markup is 3 times the build cost or about $12-15. Yet it costs $25. That doesn't include international shipping, by the way.

Economy of scale certainly works when you're making 100.

Even Seeed Studio do assembly nowadays, and you don't even need to carry the stock as the components are in their Open Part Library.