> These giants seem to be sleeping. What's preventing them from competing with the Chinese?
Realtek has been selling the rtl8710 for a long time, however it seems like it never really caught on (there have been some experimentations with Rust on it in the hobbyist world, but that's all I know).
I was under the impression that tuya is moving from esp8266 to rtl8710 for their IoT ecosystem (which in turn includes many third parties, who buy their firmware + smartphone apps + cloud infrastructure from them). This primarily affects those who wish to flash tasmota on e.g. their wifi-controllable sockets.
Realtek has been selling the rtl8710 for a long time, however it seems like it never really caught on (there have been some experimentations with Rust on it in the hobbyist world, but that's all I know).
https://www.cnx-software.com/2016/07/28/an-alternative-to-es...