75,000 Raspberry Pi baked before August
Distie says Arduino sales 'overtaken in an instant'
RS Components, one of two distributors for the Raspberry Pi, says the 75,000 of the tiny computers are burbling through the manufacturing supply chain and will be ready for release “in July to August”.
Speaking at a press event in Sydney today, ANZ Country Manager Jeremy Edward said many buyers of the computer come from within RS Components' traditional customer base of hobbyists and engineers. Many are repeat buyers who he said already likely possess the programming and electronics skills the Pi is intended to foster.
But RS Components is taking steps to make the Pi more available to its intended audience and to the 300,000 buyers who are still waiting for their byte of a Pi. CM Lim, the company's Asia Pacific head of Electronics Marketing, said the company is looking at every link in the supply chain to meet demand that “took everybody by surprise”.
One step in that process is a new order procedure that sees orders opened to just 15,000 buyers every two days. Organising buyers into batches is hoped to streamline the manufacturing process.
The effect of the Pi on RS Components' overall business is mixed. Edward said the company “won't make money, but might get famous.” He also said that the advent of the Pi has dented sales of other single board computers.
“Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant,” he said, attributing the surge of interest to the Pi's small price and the wealth of developer tools it offers. ®
Bootnote
At the event, your correspondent nestled a Pi into his iPhone 3G case. We've dubbed the result the PiPhone.
A Raspberry PiPhone
COMMENTS
careful there
You should have used a Samsung case, less chance of being sued for copyright.
Re: Optimist! @Lee Dowling
You have made lots of statements in your post that are untrue. You have made assumption that the device has been thrown out there, that no-one is working on educational software and documents, on syllabus etc. All that stuff IS indeed going on. Unless you actually work with the Foundation, you are unlikely to know that stuff, so please don't spread misinformation on areas you know nothing about. Just because YOU haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not happening. So stop guessing and making yourself look foolish.
Optimist!
Hey - this is an IT product. And it follows in the grand tradition of new groundbreaking IT products. This one, so far, is running months rather than years late. And you complain?
Look the guys who developed it are a tad optimistic. If you weren't they wouldn't do it. Developers are just that, developers. When it works they think their job done. Sadly geting it into manufacturing is also a specialist activity requiring different skills and finally distribution is yet another field.
Getting all three back to back defeats even the most well financed and resource rich multinationals. You can either take the Apple approach of enforcing (and for this you need expensive lawyers) silence till its in the supply chain - or suffer publicly from slippages and overblown expectations.
If you teach IT - this is as important to teach as hardware and software. Otherwise we do get IT shops unconnected with reality outside their bubble.
Finally this product depends on user development. As the number is still small and 'time in hand' is even smaller then you need to question your expectations. As also that the product would ever be ready for mass educational deployment in September (which actually means having everything in hand by June/July). This really was never on.
To think so says something about you. I don't think I would want you running my IT shop. Sorry ..
One more
At the event, your correspondent nestled a Pi into his iPhone 3G case. We've dubbed the result the PiPhone
Now stick that in a guitar and you'll have an Epiphone.
