There are a lot of players in that mid section as well as the high end section. Just that most of them don't have the distribution that would enable you to know about them as readily.

Take a look at Remote Central sometime for some of the more obscure brands.

Cost of developing a remote can't be measured only by the bill of materials. There's a ton of research and development and in some cases licensing costs that go into producing such a product. In the case of Harmony there are also ongoing costs for the servers that power their back end, which by now, I'm sure are pretty robust, even if their software stinks.

BTW, Logitech bought Harmony for about $21 million USD back in 2004. On the expectation that they would grow the business to over $50 Million per year. They have the distribution to make that happen and as history shows us, they came in and dominated the universal market. This past year Philips pulled their Pronto line out of the market so that's one less player.

My current remote, URC's MX-980 carries a list price over $600. I would venture to guess its BOM is probably under $50. But it also ships with software which has to be developed and maintained. It's also a dealer-centric product so it naturally carries a higher price than a consumer-oriented affair.

I worked on this "problem" for a couple of years so I have all kinds of insight and IP tied up around it. I still think there's a play to be made, but I'll have to see how a number of other things pan out in my life.