Great point. At the low end, there are the 8-bit microcontrollers that cost a few cents. Far larger than that, a fast 64-bit multicore chip, costs at least a few dollars. There's a large space in-between. A current laptop or desktop machine will have many, perhaps literally dozens, of 32-bit microcontrollers on the motherboard and in the peripherals, often integrated into a larger IC. There are multiple processors, besides the main processor, in most mobile devices. In recent years, this area has been largely controlled by ARM.
For something very simple, an in-order 32-bit processor with nothing but simple integer features, RISC-V does appear to be a bit simpler to implement than the current embedded ARM instruction sets. Less state, fewer and more regular instructions. In a large machine throwing away some tens of thousands of transistors on that is an irrelevance. But in a 10 cent microcontroller it is not. As 32-bit and 64-bit computing displaces the 8-bit embedded world, I think RISC-V has a small technical advantage in that area at least.
For something very simple, an in-order 32-bit processor with nothing but simple integer features, RISC-V does appear to be a bit simpler to implement than the current embedded ARM instruction sets. Less state, fewer and more regular instructions. In a large machine throwing away some tens of thousands of transistors on that is an irrelevance. But in a 10 cent microcontroller it is not. As 32-bit and 64-bit computing displaces the 8-bit embedded world, I think RISC-V has a small technical advantage in that area at least.