It looks like the Raspberry Pi Foundation is actually Broadcom. There's a Broadcom logo on their board, and this Eben Upton fellow appears to work for Broadcom: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ebenupton
My hunch is that they'll hit the low price point by selling it at a loss, with the expectation that it will be worth it in the long run as a marketing effort for Broadcom. That seems a little skeezy to me.
On the other hand, there could be a lot worse marketing efforts than flooding schools with cheap Linux boards.
[Edit: see response below from liz_upton, who convinces me I'm wrong. I do still think it's weird that they're "having a hell of a time" distinguishing themselves from Broadcom, but haven't tried removing the Broadcom logo from their product yet. If I were really a conspiracy theorist, I would point out the Broadcom logo is a sinc function, and the integral of sinc is pi. But that would be crazy!]
My hunch is that they'll hit the low price point by selling it at a loss, with the expectation that it will be worth it in the long run as a marketing effort for Broadcom. That seems a little skeezy to me.
On the other hand, there could be a lot worse marketing efforts than flooding schools with cheap Linux boards.
[Edit: see response below from liz_upton, who convinces me I'm wrong. I do still think it's weird that they're "having a hell of a time" distinguishing themselves from Broadcom, but haven't tried removing the Broadcom logo from their product yet. If I were really a conspiracy theorist, I would point out the Broadcom logo is a sinc function, and the integral of sinc is pi. But that would be crazy!]