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Raspberry Pi is now manufacturing 70,000 Pi 5s per week, will surge to 90,000 in February (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 11 months ago by KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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[-] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 117 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Completely abandoned their original hobbyist customer base and sent all their inventory to B2B sales channels and scalpers for several years.

And now that they're finally providing B2C vendors with stock, they've jacked up the prices by 100% to 300%.

Don't forget the Raspberry Pi foundation was supposed to be a nonprofit and the only reason they're the premier SBC is the community. Other boards have better specs, at a better price, with better features. The community support, the hobbyists, are the primary reason why they are what they are.

That's just one bad action, but their had been plenty others recently. Some other comments here have provided information you should read, such as hiring police officers who specialized in using Pi's for surveillance..

[-] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago

Also if you get a slightly bigger form factor, you can just buy a much better one.

[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I've been feeling this as well. I'm not too into the Pis but I have one on my shelf for a "one day" project. Looking at the pi5 it's way too expensive I feel like it's lost its true niche and sold out being "too mainstream"

I need to look further into single chip computer things cause I've seen some competitors come out on my feeds. Hoping there's an affordable alternative to the Pi5 that beings back the Pi3 feeling.

[-] twei@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago

Tbh I can understand why they dedicated all of their stock to industrial customers instead of individuals. If back then they'd put all of their stock on the open market, it would've been scalped instantly. But what's even more important is that there are businesses who's products rely on the Pi being available, and tbh I'd rather have businesses using a Pi for their products instead of having to switch to a proprietary solution that nobody can service in 5 years.

Also: if you ever really needed a pi, you could've asked them via e-mail and they'd hook you up with one or a couple

[-] EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago

The issue was they didn't direct the stock to the industry. They directed the stock to large customers and the small companies had no inventory at all for years or were squeezed (by the market) to the limit with a Pi4 going for $200 and more instead of $50.

The Pi CEO already went out in an interview and was like we did the right thing and would do it again. As such it was pathetic (to me) when they launched the Pi5 and were like community first. To be honest, they probably know that they need initial community support/software packages to sell it to their primary customer: Big companies.