They are leveraging their privileged hardware positions to enter adjacent high-value data markets that have little to do with their core business, from which they can generate considerable margin. Essentially, the hardware business becomes a loss leader for a sensor platform and data business. Many hardware companies are in a position to capture data models that would be difficult to acquire any other way, if they can stop thinking of themselves as hardware companies.

In the short-term, big tech companies can't replicate what is possible for these hardware companies. Longer term, I would expect these data sources to be commoditized as well.