I think the RPi CPU's are significantly less costly, and of course have higher volume production runs. Traditionally, the chips used in RPi have difficult-to-obtain low level documentation and therefore binary blobs for drivers. RPi foundation is willing to make that trade-off in favor of cost. The Beagle ecosystem has from the beginning been more of a traditional reference design "please buy our chips for your personalized version" sort of board.

yeah rpis are leftovers from old massproduced chips.. plus they lack lots of features

The Pi Zero can be extremely hard to find at $5 depending on where you live, though. Ditto for the Zero W at $10.

They're pretty awesome, but every time I go looking for one it takes a few days. Still, it is sort of fun. Like hunting for a newly-launched console.

Microcenter but they were doing a '1 per customer' thing for a while.

There aren't many MicroCenters around, and they still do an escalating price scale. $10 for 1, $15 apiece for 2-5, $20 apiece after that.

I wonder if these are sold at Microcenter. They're about 15-20 miles from one here in Michigan, although it's not like that particular store is their Headquarters or anything.

It is a shame there aren't more MicroCenter stores around, although I'm not sure really how they stay in business. It was logical that computing equipment would make the switch to being purchased primarily online[0]. Somehow MicroCenter competes well on price and very well on selection. That place is like a retail NewEgg, carrying all kinds of very specialized things. They've got everything from water cooling rigs (multiple brands), to oddities like shrink tubing, development boards, 3D printing supplies and every kind of upgrade for PCs you can think of. It's a place I avoid when I don't have an hour to sit around and a reasonable budget because I always leave there with more than I intended on purchasing but it's so nice that when I need an adapter to plug my one power supply cord into my two ports on my new graphics adapter, I can drive up the road.

Small tangent, yeah, but this product would fit really well over there.

[0] While I'm sure Apple stores do OK and full PCs probably sell OK in larger electronics chains, none of those chains carry anything resembling a reasonable selection of pieces/parts.

Their website lists some kind of Beagleboard starter kit.

Micro Center is where I went last time I built a desktop, last time I upgraded it, last time I bought boxed software, last few times I bought Raspberry Pis or components for them. And they're usually pretty full of other people doing the same. It used to be on my way home from work, and I'd stop in a few times a week just to browse.

It's about 20 minutes away, but I think I'd really rather go there than buy something online, if I have the time. And I imagine that's how they stay in business.

As far as I can suppose (although I don't actually have a source), RPiZ is sold at a loss and is made in much larger quantities than its competitors.

I would be surprised if PocketBeagle isn't also sold at a loss, although at a different scale.

Anyone else got thoughts/evidence on this?

It is definitely not sold at a loss. No maximum to the order quantity, just lead time if it is more than inventory.

Neither company is large enough to sell at a loss (where would they get the money?), although the Pi is very close to selling at marginal cost.

Lots of discussion about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10631668