Don't give Cherry switches that much credit - they have been on the market for a
very long time. They kept their keyswitches expensive to reap healthy margins, albeit from a limited market and thus they had limited economies of scale.
Competition from non-Cherry keyswitches have forced Cherry to drop prices, such that nearly identical keyboards from 2008 now cost a quarter as much. Cherry was valuable for proving the technology in the premium market, and Cherry's competitors were valuable in bringing the prices down and driving economies of scale to make mechanical keyboards basically a "no brainer" purchase now.
