They have to be cheap because no one serious about astro photography is going to buy this. Their target audience is the people who don't know much about astro photography and would be fascinated by something like this.
I love my Seestar. After fumbling about and trying to get into astrophotography it was a great intro to the sky. It was only 700$ compared to the equipment I would need for a hobby I wasn’t sure about yet. I’ve now started to get to the point where I want sharper images and I’m wanting to invest more in the hobby.
Well, Orion Telescopes and Meade just went out of business, so there may be something to the OP’s contention, at least as market dynamics are concerned.
“instead of giving users a real-time live view of distant celestial objects through an eyepiece they use pre-determined image settings (for ISO and exposure) and then live image-stack for clarity, pushing ever-improving images to connected smartphones and tablets”<p>What’s the point of even getting this? Just go look at Hubble images at that point.
The post just reads as a product placement.<p>Of course, some technique is required to setup one’s gear but that’s part of the experience and allows one to do things this kind of automated telescopes can’t.<p>Also, if the goal is to look at pretty renders - you can do that online, no telescope required.