The success of the Pi is really a textbook example of why you want good marketing, product management and strategic pricing plus a bit of timing/luck. TI have

The success of the Pi is really a textbook example of why you want good marketing, product management and strategic pricing plus a bit of timing/luck. TI have had the Beagleboard since 2008 with a Cortex-A8, ARMv7 vs the PI's ARMv6 ARM11. Nominally the Beagleboard was and is still is pretty successful, but the price tag was double the Raspberry Pi (or more in the past). However, obviously the Raspberry Pi is wildly more successful at least in terms of popularity even though it is well behind the curve technically in the ARM SoC world. The problem with the Beagleboard is that it was trying to undercut the EVM/development-board market. This is the world where ARM SoC vendors would sell boards with their SoC on it, sometimes as a reference design in order to ultimately get volume business in the mobile/embedded space. These boards typically cost in the range of 1k to 4k, the rationale behind the market price was that these boards were niche products in low volume and the customers didn't mind buying a few of these before developing their own proto-board with the chosen SoC vendor. The Pi is pretty low spec, but clearly by hitting a great price point with slightly behind the curve but still capable tech they've won the low end market and a lot of mindshare. Of course whether that turns in to profit for Broadcom is a different matter... but who knows.