Subj : Re: What Qualcomm's Arduino deal means for your Raspberry Pi To : All From : Pancho Date : Tue Oct 14 2025 15:32:28 On 10/13/25 23:21, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote: > I?d say, this article > > is completely off the mark. > > It starts with the subhead: ?So far, Raspberry Pi hasn't faced much > serious competition. That could be about to change? No, that?s not > going to change. Actually, there is already plenty of competition for > the Raspberry Pi, from the Pi clones. But a new Pi-alike isn?t going > to come from a big company like Qualcomm. > > Why? Because the margins are so low. The article itself gives some > telling figures: > > So far, Raspberry Pi hasn't faced much serious competition; > however, with Qualcomm throwing its $42.8 billion revenue heft > against Raspberry Pi (with its $346.5 million revenue), things > could change. Previously, Arduino turned over some $140 million, > so it was a much smaller fish. > > Remember, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a nonprofit, that originally > created the product for educational and tinkering purposes. You think > a big American company like Qualcomm knows how to make money on > low-margin products? It does not. Last year, Qualcomm tried to break into the laptop market using Prism emulation, but emulation has a performance overhead. They didn't do so well due to software problems. Maybe if they introduced a cheap SoC system, it would encourage the development of a native Linux software ecosystem for their chips. Which could become acceptable in the laptop/mini PC market? Both Arm and Linux are on the verge of being serious PC contenders. Qualcomm may wish to use that combination to present their hardware as direct competitors to Macs and MS Windows. In effect, they may have bigger goals, rather than a need to make a profit from the cheap Pi like device, of itself. None of which has much to do with Arduino. --- PyGate Linux v1.0 * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10) .