Comment by ulimn
4 hours ago
Do these kinds of products have to sell as many units as a phone targeting the general population? I mean, most of the target audience will hear about a new release / iteration from blog posts, tech news sites, etc., so marketing doesn't need that much resources.
Other than that, I guess it's also not necessary to fill every casual store like MediaMarkts, etc. because unlike my grandma, tech savvy people can order online.
But I'm not knowledgable on these things, so it's mostly just me thinking out loud.
The overhead of designing the actual phone and then setting up manufacturing processes and supply chains is pretty big. You definitely need to sell a lot to break even on that, especially considering that the unit margins aren't crazy.