And the manufacturers muscle might just be bringing a niche market to the table, such as a portable linux device where (almost) none currently exists.

It's a modest hike in sales at best, but the investment required by the chipmaker is small (documentation, or writing drivers), and the initial competition for that market is also small.

If we have a commercially successful device, it might just be enough to get other suppliers interested. e.g. Chuwi has some nice looking, decently spec'd tablets/laptops which dual boot Android/Win10, and a lot of interest in hacking them to run Linux on the web. Can't help thinking it wouldn't take much effort by Chuwi to put together a distro that can use all the hardware and kick their sales up a bit more?