There’s definitely an economies of scale factor. But more significant is the much higher liability defense set aside for switches to cover the company’s costs when some DIYr burns down their house or electrocutes a household member after incorrectly installing the switch, something far less likely with a bulb. Just sayin’ … 
I also think manufacturer’s recognize that smart bulbs are really just a niche application in vast majority of situations and therefore price both products accordingly. Smart bulbs really only belong in lamps plugged into outlets that don’t have switches controlling them. Anything else only causes frustration, headache, and turns the entity into what I’ll call a “far dumber” light, if you try and use a smart bulb with a dumb switch to save money.
If the switches weren’t selling at those prices, they’d lower the price. Capitalism is based on supply/demand and maximizing profits, heh.
That all used to be true until the Amazon Echo. Now voice is the primary way we control lights in our house, and we’ve added a bunch of smart bulbs in the existing fixtures and table lamps. We have a lot of people coming through the house, and no one even walks near a switch anymore. We mostly use Hue Whites, which cost $15 per bulb at Best Buy.
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That may be true for some small cases, but switches on the walls that only cause havoc will only create confusion in most situations. It only works when you have the ability to control everyone in your house and they don’t mind following the rules. Unfortunately, I don’t think this happens much in practice.
If I were to go full voice, I would consider taking out the switches and put blank plates in their place. When someone hits a switch out of habit, and a light no longer responds to voice commands…this would completely obliterate any shred of WAF.
EDIT: In this situation actually, I’d still just prefer to have the smart switches (extra expense aside) to give all occupants the best of all (heh) worlds, voice, remote, AND local control.
I hear what you’re saying, but in practice, the Echo has changed everything at our house. I have two housemates, both have friends who come over. I have friends and family who come by, as well as health aides, including subs who’ve never been here before. No one is “controlled,” everyone loves the Echo, xAF is through the roof, and hardly anyone ever touches a switch. Because voice is easier than the physical switch, using it is frictionless.
The physical switch instantly became the “Plan B” for everyone. I don’t think we’re unusual in this, if anything our household is more chaotic than most.
Everyone’s household is different, and there will certainly be people who have Echo and continue to have issues with some people turning lights off at the switch. But several months in, at our house it has changed the equation completely.
FWIW
I do want to get an Echo soon, but was under the impression it wasn’t fully integrated into SmartThings yet. Are you controlling through SmartThings or through IFTTT as a bridge and then onto SmartThings?
Yes, using IFTTT as a bridge. And the smartbulbs can be controlled directly by Echo. I hope to see official ST integration soon, meanwhile:
I have the in-wall switch. The instant update still doesn’t work on mine at the moment… 
What is the trick to get it working? ZigBee 1.5.4 on ST hub.
Looks like we got this issue squared away. Thanks!
Anyone know if the new GE Zigbee switches are HA or LL?
… in reality you have to think about the robustness of three networks since Zigbee HA and LL don’t relay for each other.
They are ZHA. They should work as ZHA repeaters.
wait so the zwave switches don’t update in-app?
They do. Just takes a sec.
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So I have one of these switches. I am using a modified version of the new switch device handler since the parsing has been updated. Here is the challenge for me. The jasco switch for zwave has the spec online on how to program it. The zigbee does not. I reached out to them and they told me it is not public. These companies kill me. Build a switch on open standards so that it can be adopted and then don’t publish that standard. This switch works good but I would like to program it to address things like the rate and steps the dimer will work at. I could go through all the clusters it is suppose to adopt to be certified but in doing that I have had to reset the switch many times. I am not that great at this but am getting through the standards for zigbee.
I am working on a solution to reset the dim level if someone dims the unit to zero ( people that do not know how to use the switch keep holding it down to turn it off). Does anyone know if there are attributes I can send to the switch, got a spec I would love to get my hands on it.
Will the GE In-Wall Smart Switch (ZigBee) ever support double tap app? It currently doesn’t work…
I’m not sure, but I would try asking in the double tap / double duty threads…