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  • What Qualcomm's Arduino deal means for your Raspberry Pi

    From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Tue Oct 14 10:30:01 2025
    I?d say, this article <https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-qualcomms-arduino-deal-means-for-your-raspberry-pi/>
    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.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.0
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Pancho@3:633/10 to All on Tue Oct 14 15:32:28 2025
    On 10/13/25 23:21, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    I?d say, this article <https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-qualcomms-arduino-deal-means-for-your-raspberry-pi/>
    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)
  • From Daniel James@3:633/10 to All on Tue Oct 14 12:54:34 2025
    On 13/10/2025 23:21, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
    Remember, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a nonprofit, that originally
    created the product for educational and tinkering purposes.

    There are two Raspberry Pis.

    Raspberry Pi Ltd (aka Raspberry Pi Holdings plc) is a publicly-quoted for-profit company that makes the Raspberry Pi computer (among other
    things).

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a nonprofit educational charity that
    promotes computer science and education using the Raspberry Pi computer
    (among other things).

    The two are related, but they are not one and the same.

    --
    Cheers,
    Daniel.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.0
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lawrence D?Oliveiro@3:633/10 to All on Wed Oct 15 09:00:01 2025
    On Tue, 14 Oct 2025 15:32:28 +0100, Pancho wrote:

    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.

    That?s assuming there was some rational basis to the acquisition, rather
    than just being a corporate vanity project. (Or even worse, an attempt to muscle in on a market where they don?t stand a chance of making a profit.)

    Historically, such deals have about a 50/50 chance of success.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.0
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)