There are basically two main chips in there, one handles most of the RF chain, the other drives the display and handles button pushes. Both likely cost under a dollar each at volume. The vast majority of the other components are tiny passives that cost less than a cent each and are just for filtering and impedance matching.
In terms of development costs, there is definitely skill in component selection and packaging, but generally speaking the main PCB could have been designed by a lot of EE grads.
If you spend some time looking at it, in terms of sophistication it's barely a couple steps above a happy meal toy, but since nobody wants to make quality flexible use radios, this is what everyone ends up buying to experiment with.
In terms of development costs, there is definitely skill in component selection and packaging, but generally speaking the main PCB could have been designed by a lot of EE grads.
If you spend some time looking at it, in terms of sophistication it's barely a couple steps above a happy meal toy, but since nobody wants to make quality flexible use radios, this is what everyone ends up buying to experiment with.