I agree with your sentiment, but I am more optimistic about the future of RISC-V. It considerably lowered the barrier of entry for vendors, and so there are mor

I agree with your sentiment, but I am more optimistic about the future of RISC-V. It considerably lowered the barrier of entry for vendors, and so there are more of them! Higher competition usually means that users win: they get lower prices, open-source toolchains and firmware, etc. For one, I am very excited about the tiny CH32V003 ([1], [2]), a RISC-V 48 MHz microcontroller that costs ~$0.10 and can be programmed with completely open-source tools, see [3] and [4]. I am reasonably sure the higher end of the spectrum of RISC-V chips will also get better in terms of user-friendliness. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Wrv7nW-S8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Wrv7nW-S8 2. http://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html http://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html 3. https://github.com/cnlohr/ch32v003fun https://github.com/cnlohr/ch32v003fun 4. https://github.com/aappleby/PicoRVD https://github.com/aappleby/PicoRVD