I'm not sure if this is good or bad. I use an M5Stack tough for one of my products. It works ok, but I really wish M5 had some more OEM friendly options.
My experience dealing with Espressif is that they are pleasure to work with professionally. I come from a world where Atmel made a lot of sense for the lower volume I deal with. Atmel support was ok before they got bought by Microchip, now it can be impossible to find answers to problems, and support response is meh at best. When I started to move products over to esp32 a few years ago, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Things seemed to just work, and I could find answers easily in the documentation. They also responded pretty well when I found a problem that was a limitation of the chip that was only documented in a code comment in their low level drivers. Their response, including several emails, that the info would be included in the next revision of datasheet left me feel pretty good about the whole thing. I would not expect that kind of interaction from any of the chip makers I've worked with so far, especially adjusted for the cost of the chip.
So, hopefully this is a good thing for M5Stack. I don't know what kind of pressures this will have on the company internally, but hopefully their outward facing presence will only get better.
I don't think M5 is looking for OEM partners, it's pretty clearly a B2C solution. Espressif has most everything you need if you're looking to OEM something.
This was going through my head. From a cost of acquisition standpoint Espressif had already captured (effectively) 100% of M5 stacks users, so this must be a play to remove some inefficiencies and the supply chain they already have in place.
milesvp|1 year ago
So, hopefully this is a good thing for M5Stack. I don't know what kind of pressures this will have on the company internally, but hopefully their outward facing presence will only get better.
luma|1 year ago
thebeardisred|1 year ago