I would like to help my clients move off PIC. Many seem to like the low cost of entry, use it to get started, and then come to us asking us to finish. The PIC platform is not the best for what they need. What would be some good alternatives?
Bob,
Your best bet for low power / low cost is a product based on the Cortex-M0+ architecture.
There are over 200 MCUs that use that architecture.
Suppliers include Atmel (SAMD20), Freescale (Kinetis L family), ST (STM32L0), NXP (LPC810M021FN8), and SiLabs EFM32ZG (Zero Gecko).
What other requirements do you have?
There were several new boards announced at Embedded World this week as well. For more info on the Microchip SAM D20, Atmel released a new video this week
In addition to the Freescale Kinetis KL02 CSP by Freescale L family, I'd also look at the Kinetis K family. Kinetis K Series MCUs: High Performance and Rich Integration. To hear about the KL03 that was announced this week, here is Geoff Lees, GM of MCUs at Freescale and andyframe
Andy Frame's blogs has more news and videos about boards and announcements from STMicroelectronics NXP and Silicon Labs
The Internet of Things Runs on ARM - Embedded World 2014 Day 1 and
The Internet of Things and ARM at Embedded World - A perfect match at EW2014, Day 2
Good luck