Amazon doesn't care about selling the hardware. They'd be ecstatic if this caught on. It'd be like owning the kindle ecosystem without having to take a loss on the hardware.
They provide Alex-as-a-service: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo... ("Build for Free. Using AVS to power speech experiences on your devices is completely free.")
(Note: I'm guessing that this will be lower accuracy than the echo, since the echo's acoustic models are probably tuned for their hardware.)
They provide Alex-as-a-service: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo... ("Build for Free. Using AVS to power speech experiences on your devices is completely free.") (Note: I'm guessing that this will be lower accuracy than the echo, since the echo's acoustic models are probably tuned for their hardware.)