How do you pay R&D engineers, prototypes, production, sales, support, etc... with such a low quantity volumes if the price is on the same order as the BOM? Act

How do you pay R&D engineers, prototypes, production, sales, support, etc... with such a low quantity volumes if the price is on the same order as the BOM? Actually, depending on your precise definition of "same order", I could argue it already is. And while the gross margin will seem high if you are only used to consumer stuff, this is an almost useless metric for low volumes, where the net margin do not necessarily follow. There are also not a ton of different vendors, so even dreaming about mutualizing some R&D costs (and that will mostly not happen), you would not save a lot. Once again, cheap portable machines (but not able to do a lot) already exists.