Why would anyone spend $300+$80 for a Remarkable 2 when a Kobo Elipsa or Kindle Scribe is less and they are better at book reading, have features like a screen light and don't need a subscription to do things like cloud sync? Marginally better note taking feel?
(warning- jump scare!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcdxW2XF0v8
I just don't understand paying $40 more than a Kindle Scribe to cut out maybe 1 or 2 minor distractions.
But I think a product category has grown up around them and eaten some of the lunch that they decided not to eat. Even if they continue to differentiate themselves from other e-ink tablets, they are still in the same market category. So, competetively, if they differentiate on fewer features, they should probably do so at reduced cost.
Which puts them in a bind, because the hardware isn't simpler so the raw materials don't come cheaper. And even more irony, their software is custom, so it's not even cheaper to build or maintain than the Android based ones.
I have one, and the physical device is excellent, and the experience on it is great if you stay WAY in your lane (note taking on top of PDFs is probably the single strongest use case), but the software just always feels behind.
But it does mean that they deliberately exclude bells and whistles that you would expect from a general-purpose software device. Though IMHO with every added feature, they are scope-creeping away from the spartan value prop.
FWIW the USB exposes it over a virtual network which lets you do fun stuff like SSH. But that's for fun, not serious.