While there's a market for. Those kinds of boards, it's not a really large market. That's going to limit competition and it's expensive to design, create, and market such a product.
Online game chessboards - Square-off monopoly
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Square Off do currently have a monopoly on boards that move their own pieces and boards that roll up. But the market for boards that take 5 seconds to make a move, or don't lie flat on the table, is quite limited. (I have a Square Off Pro, so I'm familiar with the problem). A good board that moves its own pieces has to be fast, quiet, work smoothly/reliably, have reasonably weighted pieces, have good software with good connectivity, and probably needs to be less than $1,000. That's asking a lot. The only one that looked like it came close was Regium (!!!).
You compare it to the Pegasus, though, which is a totally different type of board. In that market there is lots of competition with many boards from Certabo, Chessnut, DGT, iChessOne, Millennium and Tabutronic just to name the ones I have. There is no way you could call these companies' products "minor alternatives", especially when compared to Square Off.
I would say that I love it. This is the best way to enjoy online chess keeping active that contact with reality that then is very effective every time you have the chance to play face to face with someone.
Nevertheless, the chessboard has a lot of issue. Many bugs, the app is poor, quality of the pieces is not at the level of the price you pay, there is a single rubber version, the Bluetooth is battery killing, etc etc.
Somehow this is reasonable taking into consideration that Square off is still a small startup. But my question is, why any other big company seriously invested in this technology? Are people not interested in these kind of products? Which is your opinion?
Yes, there are some minor alternatives, but we can all agree that also DGT Pegasus is far away to be a decent product.