Those are the reasons you, boy, will never get our EVKs

1. Company Policies

Reputational Risks

Selling chips and boards to an engineering company not capable of complex hardware bring-up can cause unpleasant connotations and negative advertisements (promotions). This includes, but is not limited to, improper reaction or wrong impression on vendor’s SDK, HAL (too many errors, undocumented APIs, or flow is complicated) in social networks or professional communities

Contract Liabilities

Request for Quotation (RFQ) can be subject to rejection and considered as non-legitimate from the partnership point of view. It’s not uncommon for vendors to establish a unique relationship with EMS or design house companies emphasizing mutual benefit.

It sounds strange as isn't the main goal for any company - to sell as much as possible to gain profit? Not in this case. Cons outweigh the pros. The items below unveils why so.

IP protection

New hardware boards contain specific (ASIC, NPU, DSP) chips with complex data flow usually described more or less comprehensively in the documentation. Giving away a development kit almost always means sharing information with a buyer. Who, in turn, raises questions of Intellectual Property (IP). Even though a seller requires a buyer to sign an NDA before shipping, soft-pedaling is not a good thing here.

2. Regulatory Agencies

Government-Forcible Restrictions

The hard one. Games on a higher level between governments can have a huge impact on a company’s operations. The appearance of new restrictions or hardening existing ones can be foreseen, but no one can fully prepare for it. Thus being said, one day you are forbidden to sell products to partners in other countries. New Order. New Changes. Anytime and any place.

Importers vs. Exporters Regulatory Actions

Some countries have regulations (laws) that significantly restrict the export of specific technologies and know-how. Importers, on the other hand, have to battle through the numerous checks, introduced by a state apparatus.

3. Operational Reasons

Low Volume

Pretty self-explanatory. Companies selling thousands of chips aren't interested in wasting time discussing projects that require just hundreds of dies. It also depends on a contact point and how influential the pitch is.

Customer Support

Hardware solutions worth considering contain complex data pipelines and flows. Development in general and R&D in particular always goes ahead of documentation. Even after, it takes months cleaning things up and providing up-to-date specifications and datasheets.

So, obviously, no one wants to dive into a never-ceasing stream of questions from buyers. It’s time-consuming, free (cause you don’t want to guarantee) results are unpredictable (started working in some unexpected way for a buyer) and sometimes even useless as new hardware revisions with revised software stacks come out pretty often, especially in the case of cutting-edge technologies.

Possible Interrogation on Prices

Rather rare, but still can be the case. Small companies start bargaining in order to bring down the prices. This may annoy vendors.

Bringing Up Cutting-Edge Technology

Or the reason being (of RFQ rejection) can be stupidly simple - the company is just about to release the next revision of the board doing hardware fixes or changing firmware.

Labeling and versioning details are hidden from the outer world, but these internal things can justify the negative answer.

What About Resellers?

Vendors do not necessarily sell chips by themselves but rather introduce official resellers. And those players have internal motivation to extract all possible information from a client before selling them boards due to the following reasons:

• The vendor may have unclear relations with the EMS company or be EMS itself, thus suggesting to use their services.
• Before setting the prices, it is advantageous for the seller to know the customer’s situation: volume, roadmap, and product area potentials.
• Preferences are set by the vendors implicitly. In this case, the seller refuses to fulfill the customer's needs.