alt Hacker NewsArduino is a tiny market, and Qcom has left bigger things to die on the vine previously. They dont need Arduino to succeed in any way.
Arduino is a tiny market, and Qcom has left bigger things to die on the vine previously. They dont need Arduino to succeed in any way.
I, respectfully, disagree with this analysis.
Prototyping platforms have tiny markets, but lead to downstream sales. Many a company were brought down by more developer-friendly platforms ignoring the "tiny" userbase of people who want to do unconventional things.
Most IC vendors provide free samples and support because of this. That's a market size of close to zero -- electronic engineers -- but leads to a market size of "massive." I can get an application engineer to visit my office for free to help me develop if I want.
Arguably, iPhone and Android won by supporting the tiny market of developers, who went on to build an ecosystem of applications, some long-tail, and some unexpected successes.
And arguably, x86 won for the same reason.
Atmel had shipped 500 million AVR flash microcontrollers, due in large part to the ecosystem created by Arduino.
Balmer said "Developers! developers! developers!" Visual Studio was not a major revenue driver for Microsoft; what was developed in it was.