Coming also from a hardware design & embedded background, it was quite a surprise when I began to notice this a few years ago. I was so accustomed to processors being expensive that it was a shock to notice that as their prices dropped close to zero, it was the connectors and switches in my design that were becoming the expensive bits.
OTOH, CPUs are now so cheap they have become replacements for fixed logic devices.
Sure cpu's are cheap, but the thinking in the embedded world is still - i'm making 20K of this(or maybe a lot more) , and if i save 50cents on the cpu - this is $10K so management will like this savings, even if it takes some work.
But actually , if you can replace the physical UI with a phone based UI using a cheap bluetooth mcu and some framework like blynk or simblee ,than you'll have a decent ram/flash and a cheaper product.
OTOH, CPUs are now so cheap they have become replacements for fixed logic devices.