RPi as a board is clearly simple enough that there would be clones if you could get components at competitive prices. The only conclusion is than that you either can't get the CPU, or you can't get it at a competitive price.
RPi use Broadcom chips, which you rarely find these on other hobbyist boards. The most likely cause, after what I heard from people in the industry, is that you usually either can't can't get Broadcom chips at all, at acceptable prices, or even documentation for them when you are only interested in the small quantities you'd need for introducing a new/clone hobbyist board. Not unless you've got some serious connections.
The only reason I would consider buying an Arduino (or similar) is for super-low-power applications.
Otherwise RPi would have been copied a long time ago at a lower price.
Anyone sufficiently cynical (not me) can read the accounts of both entities:
- https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details?regid=...
> This was another year of exceptional growth with Revenues at £25.5m (2016 - 16.3m) and Operating Profit of £9.7m (2016 - £8.9m)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization#Nonprof...
How does paying your employees suddenly make you for-profit?
Do you know the definition of "profit"?
If anything, it seems like they've judged that their large size and brand recognition is something that they can coast on to avoid having to offer what other SBC vendors do.
I'm not complaining about rpi existing, I'm pointing out that what they offer is in certain aspects inferior to the offerings of smaller SBC vendors, which is actually surprising, given that their large size should make them much better resourced to match or exceed the offerings of those vendors. This causes me to question whether these values are actually a priority at all, even if they claim so.