alt Hacker News> The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts.
With Arduino, the hardware is probably the least interesting/important part. The software side is more important, providing an easy-to-use IDE and a simplified API and platform abstraction layer to make it super-easy to get started. Then there's the documentation, sample code, and community.
Indeed, at this point, there are possibly hundreds of Arduino compatible boards, and the other pieces of the puzzle are more important. Arduino is the Python of microcontroller development.
Come for the odd little microcontroller board. Stay for the community.