I wonder if perhaps they are having trouble securing manufacturing capacity for analogue chips?

By dropping WiFi and BT, they can use a different production process in other foundry's.

I'd guess they're shooting for a higher performance process & that it just doesnt work very well for the analog/rf design a wifi chip might use. Or they're just not experienced yet adapting tbese smaller nodes.

I'd love to know what kind of nodes various bits of wifi hardware so use. And what nodes existing (all wireless capable) Espressif chips are on.

Maybe next year we'll see this chip paired with another die in the same package for the analog stuff adding in WiFi, Bluetooth, an ethernet Mac, a 1 watt audio amp, an analog mux, and all the other things to make it a real 'system' on chip.

Dont forget about a GB of ram, and maybe some DC-DC converters. ;)