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The Raspberry Pi has sold 10 million units - continuing its success as the most popular British computer ever.
The computer, about the same size as a credit card, was first released in 2012 and is widely used as an educational tool for programming.
However, it can also be used for many practical purposes such as streaming music to several devices in a house.
A new starter kit for Raspberry Pi, including a keyboard and mouse, has been released to celebrate the success.
The kit also includes an SD storage card, official case, power supply, HDMI cable, mouse, keyboard and guidebook - it costs £99 plus VAT and will be available in the coming weeks.
Congratulations and thanks to Eben Upton and the Raspberry Pi Foundation for getting a whole new generation of kids interested in computing and reigniting passion for technology among old curmudgeonly techies.
Also reported here.
(Score: 2) by gnampff on Friday September 09 2016, @09:30AM
I like to see them succeed but I would love to see them succeed more by producing enough to meet demand.
The Pi Zero release was 9 months ago and the shops that even dare to list it still all limit it to one per customer/order.
I would have expected them to have learned from their previous short supply experiences that they regularly had in the last four years.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday September 09 2016, @01:44PM
Could it be that Broadcom introduced the Zero as kind of "bait" or anti-competition threat?
One, this would keep people away from other solutions (e.g. ESP8266): "Oh, why choose anything other than the Raspi or even something not running full Linux if we can have the Zero at 5 quid by the time we deploy our project."
Two, it would discourage possible other vendors to enter the market with a competing device, e.g.: "We could easily out-price the regular Pi, but have no means of getting to the Zero price point (*); once we're ready to ship, the Zero appears in quantities and cleans up the entire market."
(*) That's might well be, because it's impossible to build a 5-buck-full-Linux 512MB RAM computer while breaking even. I don't know the detailed pricing structures in the industry. Just for reference: an Atmega328 (Arduino Uno, 2K RAM) in PDIP costs 2.50 EUR for the chip alone in retail. A 5-pack of ESP8266 (160K RAM) on the 'bay goes for the nerd-appealing sum of 13,37 EUR (including shipping...).
I don't see why they couldn't ask one of the reputable chinese factories ("A _million_ of those??? We usually charge an extra low-quantity fee if we have to make that few...") when they otherwise easily afford the production with Sony UK.