From reading more into the project, it sure looks like Broadcom is giving this group a significant helping hand.

Given that Eben Upton is currently a technical director at Broadcom while simultaneously working on this Raspberry Pi project...maybe I'm not so shocked anymore. It's actually refreshing to see chipmakers put out cheaper EVKs to play with instead of $4000 development systems. It's good marketing.

I'd single out TI as the largest culprit of making EVKs hard to get, but I'm also inclined to believe they've been giving Beagleboard/Pandaboard a helping hand (like where can you find loose OMAP4s on the market? I sure can't.)