That is true, you are basically buying a small PC. My bet is that Valve is losing a decent amount of money on each Steam Deck they sell, knowing they will likely make up for it in game purchases. Seems like all of the consoles (PS5, Xbox, etc) lose money on the hardware end so make up for it in accessories and games. The Aya Neo doesn't have that luxury since it just runs Windows 11 out of the box and you can install whatever you want on it. They don't get any kickbacks so they have to make their money in the hardware.
Yup that is correct, they adopted it from the printers business model.