alt Hacker News10k? Sorry, pal! We're in QualcommLand, and you need to be at least 100k units tall to ride this ride!
But if you are a small developer, there are options for you! Have you tried to: eat shit? And die? So that you don't insult our PRECIOUS FUCKING TIME by IMPLYING that a MERE 10K would be ENOUGH for THE GREAT QUALCOMM to ACTUALLY CARE?
The optimist in me wants to believe that this acquisition is a sign of Qualcomm actually trying to be better than that. But realistically? Yeah no. It's Qualcomm. They wouldn't have let it get this bad if they ever cared.
afaik, Raspberry Pis move around 7M units annually.
Based on their first announced product (https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q), I think Qualcomm is trying to get into that space, and they bought Arduino for the brand name.
You're right that Qualcomm isn't in the business of small business. But maybe they expect that the market is big enough that it's worth their while to pay a subsidiary (Arduino) to do it.