It's exactly economies of scale and support. Pi is still pretty tiny as a business and benefits from community goodwill and input. Only now are they achieving the millions of units shipped which are needed to achieve good economy of scale.

There is e.g. the Asus tinker board which is twice the price and out of stock. https://www.asus.com/uk/Single-board-Computer/TINKER-BOARD/

To be fair, the tinker board is only 50% more and does include additional features (some extra speed and GbE). The US release is happening right now, so that could affect availability worldwide as Asus tries to launch with sufficient quantities. I somehow was able to order one, sold by Amazon US no less, and get it last week; there's not even a listing anymore.

Not too bad for a product that was announced late January.

That doesn't explain the zero's price. They are making a loss on those, and a quite big one at that. It is not possible to make something like the Pi Zero for less than double it's retail price.

(citation needed) - I'm fairly sure they are not selling zeroes at a loss.

I think it is the same problem that is facing the likes of mobile phones, economics of scale. The factories basically need a minimum number of units before it is worth setting up the production line.

> Where are the commercial offerings?

It's called a BeagleBone Black/Green. I can buy 1000 of those tomorrow off of Mouser. And I can go talk to TI to get a volume discount if I'm buying bunches.

The RPi is a neat toy good for one offs and the community is excellent. The $5 is cool marketing, but it's vapor when you go to fab it.

However, when I need to support something commercially, I need datasheets and customer reps. I get that for the Beaglebone while the situation for the RPi is laughable.

But the BB is ~$50? Literally 10x?

It ain't $5 if I can't fab it at that price.

I can get a Raspberry Pi 2/3 for $35. That's a real price that reflects the Bill of Materials.

However, I still can't get a datasheet or support from Broadcom. That's a dealbreaker.

Feel free to use RPi's in your projects or for small volume. But if you need real volumes, use a Beaglebone Black/Green.

CHIP has its own backlog problems. I ordered mine early January, still no ship date in sight, forum has a fair amount of grumbling.

I ordered mine sometime last year, and was able to get them fairly quickly when they finally delivered. Guess they couldn't keep up with demand after initial backers.

Still, if there were more commercial players, there wouldn't be such a frenzy around the few offerings..