>There were a few products that shipped full Raspberry pis in an enclosure in the name of velocity. The savings possible there were probably in the dollars, not cents, not to mention the supply chain issues. And yet companies did it in the name of velocity.
Sometimes it's better to have a product that you can sell, than waiting to perfect the product to sell.
Let's leave aside the RPi availability issues, you could do this with any other discovery board.
Say you want to sell your first 1000 of products x, y, and z to see how the product market fit is. You might find that x and y don't sell at all, but z was sold out in the blink of an eye.
Now you can design a custom PCB for z, knowing that it will probably sell well. And until that is finished you continue selling the off the shelf version. Some profit is better than no profit, and consistency is good for your brand.
Sometimes it's better to have a product that you can sell, than waiting to perfect the product to sell.
Let's leave aside the RPi availability issues, you could do this with any other discovery board.
Say you want to sell your first 1000 of products x, y, and z to see how the product market fit is. You might find that x and y don't sell at all, but z was sold out in the blink of an eye.
Now you can design a custom PCB for z, knowing that it will probably sell well. And until that is finished you continue selling the off the shelf version. Some profit is better than no profit, and consistency is good for your brand.