> "Once you stop learning, you start dying" That sounds depressingly like an obituary, because the main lessons of the last several years in this space have been that:
1. Price is king. 2. The sales/price curve is an exponential over price, and even a poor design that's cheap can sell millions. 3. A SoC slapped onto a PCB with SDRAM and some connectors cannot have a high price unless someone is price gouging or their manufacturing systems are hopelessly uncompetitive. 4. There is no shortage of manufacturers of ARM SoCs, so a good engineer has a smorgasbord from which to choose. 5. There is no shortage of good ARM boards, so a high price merely ensures that your audience is small or niche, or zero. 6. Embedded is not a niche market so competition is intense, and ignoring the competition is a business deathwish. These are all very important lessons, and they represent the business environment of today in ARM boards. Someone once said "Once you stop learning, you start dying", and in a business sense that's very true. Companies either learn and fit into the business environment of the day or they don't survive. I very much appreciate my many Beaglebones of both colours, all made by CircuitCo and not clones, and I was quite inspired along with thousands of other people by this very effective 2-member series of boards. But time doesn't stand still, and it's the right time now for another younger and even more nimble member to join the family and impress a generation eager for more IoT devices. I've read some depressing "There's nowhere to go" comments on this list resulting from TI's lack of a newer $5 volume SoC to continue the AM335x family line, but that's just narrow thinking. There's plenty of room for new products within the Beaglebone form factor, and it was proven just very recently by Seeed Studio's newly announced Beaglebone Green <http://makezine.com/2015/05/15/announcing-new-beaglebone-green/>. There's nowhere to go only if your mind is chained to an existing spec. All change that improves the ability to meet some embedded requirement that wasn't well served before should be on the cards for consideration. Lowering the price definitely fits into that category because it opens up so many new embedding opportunities, and it's definitely the single factor which most affects mass adoption. In summary, I think reports of the end of the BBB line reflect more a lack of energy for innovation than a lack of possibilities. For example, a new and cheaper "BBE" (Embedded-only) could drop HDMI as Seeed did very sensibly, as well as lose the eMMC. This would undoubtedly drop the price significantly since the change of eMMC size from 2GB to 4GB was blamed for the *rise* in BBB prices. And with the drop in price will come a rise in demand (lesson #2) and hence in sales too, if CircuitCo can cope with that. The end isn't necessarily nigh. It's a very good form factor. Morgaine. On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 8:12 PM, Gerald Coley <ger...@beagleboard.org> wrote: > "Once you stop learning, you start dying" > > A.E. > > Gerald > > > On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 1:52 PM, rh_ <richard_hubb...@lavabit.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, 28 May 2015 17:17:45 -0500 >> Gerald Coley <ger...@beagleboard.org> wrote: >> >> > There is a number out there that says the price should be 2.6x the >> > cost of the BOM. I will say that the X-15 will be less than 2.6x the >> > BOM, but it is not in the pitiful range of the BBB margins. There is >> > some margin there to allow people to support it and invest in it, >> > making it better. And hopefully use it for something more than a fast >> > Linux build machine or an LED flasher. >> >> This is what people want to know. And some people don't even know >> that they want to know this. But they need to know and understand >> the real price/cost for things. >> >> > >> > At some point, the race to the bottom has to stop. I suspect we will >> > see $1 boards soon with $35 shipping and handling. The reality is the >> > price you see is not the price you pay. I will say, the price you see >> > for the X-15 will be the price you pay. >> >> This is good and I think many in the world are becoming wiser. We are >> learning, but slowly. >> >> -- >> For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "BeagleBoard" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > > > -- > Gerald > > ger...@beagleboard.org > http://beagleboard.org/ > > -- > For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "BeagleBoard" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
