All of the products that i've been involved with that included AVR microcontrollers are from before the Arduino platform existed. The STMicro ARM M3 chips are more capable and cheaper then the 8-bit AVRs; The Arduino IDE never factored into the decision, even at the height of its popularity.
FWIW: I've used Arduinos, but never with their IDE.
AVR was super-developer-friendly well before the Arduino. It replaced the PIC for a lot of hobbyist projects.
To the points in the thread, on major product development, these things don't matter. On the long tail of smaller products, as well as on unexpected successes, they do.