@aegis this isn't directed at you.....

Keyword being just... We've had this debate over & over....
It's been explained in great detail why it's not fair to compare apples & oranges, as though they're apples & apples.
Jolla's building all it's sw/infra from the ground up, & with less combined resources going into MeR/Nemo contributions (relatively speaking).
Android ODM's of Jolla's size or slightly larger don't have the same overheads in this area, not even close.
Much bigger players (& no doubt a mass of smaller ones) in the Android "ecosystem" are carrying most of the load there.

Why can Canonical/BQ get it that low?[1] Apart from having many of the same advantages (albeit less pronounced) as the aforementioned, hard to say why exactly.
I won't delve too deeply, as it's mostly 'tea leaf reading'....
They do have a much bigger pool of cash at their disposal (thanks Mark), so can afford to make next-to-nothing in profit, also, the load/risk[2] is being spread between them.
Whatsmore it sounds like Canonical has at least 1 more hw partner in the pipeline, all at diff. price points, so none of them are competing directly with one another (initially).
Which is good, because if you're making a tiny profit you'll want to maximise the no. of units you're shifting, by ensuring no one else is shifting at the same PP.

It needs to come down a little bit more, but I understand why there must be a slight premium over what "BQ's of the world" charge for -roughly- equivalent hw.
If the Nemo/Sailfish nursery pond gets much larger, then we may see this change with some Sailfish ODM's.
But Jolla is perpetually failing to get others on-board, so I really don't know any more...

[1] Lets be clear, spec-for-spec I think it's a few rungs below the Jolla "overall", but that'll differ from user to user, as we all have diff. priorities on hw features
[2] Financial, technical, logistical etc.