I agree. Doing this now for 5G "mesh" based BTLE devices which I hope will drop dramatically in price. Working out low-cost PMIC, crystal and passive component compatibilities for US based chipsets is a bit of a regulatory issue, but the "clones" iterate so fast I expect them to have complete designs available by mid-2019 and hope to make the money on the software / data.

Interesting. I suppose your value add could be EMC, packaging, support and infrastructure on that.

That works even better if your product has no electronics at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18210950

Then hire another factory to clone that BOM optimized part for v2 :p

Just wait :)

If you look at the really cheap multimeters based on the DT830 design root they were originally derived from early Fluke DMMs circa 1985. Fluke hired Intersil to make the ASIC, Intersil second sourced it, the Chinese cloned it and cost optimised it, and then more Chinese guys cloned the target devices (panel meters and DMMs) and built mass production lines. Optimally they even optimised out the DIP packages as they were expensive and bonded the die straight to the PCB.

Down from $500 a pop to $2.