Supply chain update – it’s good news!
For the first time in a couple of years of semiconductor supply chain hell, we’ve got some good news for you.
If you’ve tried to buy pretty much anything recently, you’ll realise that we are in the midst of a global supply chain crisis, affecting everything from cement and fenceposts to jewellery and clothing. Various aspects of this crisis have impacted our business, but persistent shortages of the semiconductor devices we use to build Raspberry Pi single-board computers and modules has been particularly challenging for us (and a lot of other tech businesses) to manage.
Happy Christmas
As a thank-you to our army of very patient enthusiast customers in the run-up to the holiday season this year, we’ve been able to set aside a little over a hundred thousand units, split across Zero W, 3A+ and the 2GB and 4GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4, for single-unit sales. These are flowing into the Approved Reseller channel now, and this is already translating into better availability figures on rpilocator. While we’re not quite out of the woods yet, things are certainly improving. For those of you looking to buy a Raspberry Pi for hobby projects or prototyping, the advice we gave back in April still holds: always buy from an Approved Reseller (they’re under contract with us to sell at no more than the RRP); use tools like rpilocator to keep an eye on which resellers have recently received stock; and consider whether your project is a good fit for Raspberry Pi Pico or Pico W, which remain in a strong stock position. And if you’re an industrial or enterprise customer who is experiencing supply issues, and you have not already spoken to us, please get in touch with our commercial team at business@raspberrypi.com.
Recovery ahead
For a variety of reasons, we leave 2022 with much better visibility of our future silicon supply chain than we entered with. As a result, we can say with confidence that, after a lean first quarter, we expect supply to recover to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2023, and to be unlimited in the second half of the year.
We will continue to actively manage our commercial and industrial customers through 2023, ensuring that they receive the units they need, and we’ve made some changes to make sure that inventory-building behaviour which would otherwise prolong the shortage for everybody else can’t take place.
Increasing single-unit sales
Although we are sitting on substantial order backlogs from commercial customers, we expect to gradually increase the fraction of our output which we dedicate to single-unit sales next year until we’re back in our pre-pandemic situation. The chip allocations we’ve received for next year mean that by the end of the third quarter, the channel will have recovered to its equilibrium stocking level, with hundreds of thousands of units available at any given time. At that point, we will have spent a little over two years in a low-stock position: a measure of the severity and persistence of the shortages.
As we go through the year, it is likely that you’ll see Zero and Zero W come back into general availability first, followed by products like Raspberry Pi 3A+ which do not have an extensive industrial customer base; and, finally, the various versions of Raspberry Pi 4.
Raspberry Pi Zero cost increase
An unpleasant side effect of the supply chain crisis has been an increase in the cost of pretty much every component that goes into a Raspberry Pi, from PCBs to connectors to silicon. We’ve generally absorbed these cost increases ourselves, holding the prices of our products constant, and making less profit on each unit. The exceptions have been the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4, which we returned to its original $45 price point; and Compute Module 4, where we applied an across-the-board $5 price increase to all variants.
Our original Raspberry Pi Zero products have always had very low margins, and after the recent cost increases they are no longer commercially viable at their original price points — if we kept to the old price we’d be making a loss on every single Zero we sell. We have therefore reluctantly decided to increase the price of Zero from $5 to $10, and Zero W from $10 to $15. There is an upside here, though: once Zero products return to volume availability in 2023, we no longer expect to see the single-unit limitations that have been a feature of Zero since its launch in 2015 — you’ll be able to buy as many as you want at a time.
161 comments
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Tyeth Gundry
Wonderful news!
The new price increase on the Zero W’s is a shame, it will encourage a larger <20$ ecosystem, but the price was never $10 unless you already had everything power and converter-wise.
Think it's form factor is brilliant, any chance of another discontinued chip / model with a gig or two of RAM?
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
More RAM is definitely something we’d like to see as an option on a future successor to Zero 2W, but that’s some way off.
M_A_T_T
Hi! I am trilled to see all the exciting moves forward! Keep up the amazing work team!!! 2023 will be your best year yet!
OSoft
I agree it would be interesting for Zero 2 W to have more RAM. As well as better clocking speed. I am 13, not an adult of course, so I do not understand exactly why Zero 2 W should have significantly less power than the Pi 4. I understand that the RAM is inside of the Cortex Processor, would increasing RAM capacity take up more area inside of the chip, as well as an increased clock? What if some of this architecture was based on the Pi 4’s, or the compute module 4 or 4S?
Butch Kemper
Stop whining. Even with the $5 increase, the Pi Zero price is still a really good deal.
Kevin McAleer
This is the best Christmas present you could ask for. Looking forward to filling my boots in 2023!
Steve Cooper
Great news Eben – although i’ve been playing with pico’s recently I could still do with an update to my original Pi Model B though.
David
I’d love to have your early model/s, if when you upgrade.
I try to collect them by year-date on the board(and my mod. number)
whether the board is dead or alive!
Might assemble a Museum, one day!
Ben
To be honest, even the price increase on the zero lines in a win in my book — because we’ll now be able to buy these units in quantity (and hopefully the increased profit allows these units to be manufactured in more bulk, improving availability). I appreciate this comes from a position of privilege, however I’m sure grant or other funding will be available in the instance where the $5 price increase is cost prohibitive.
Matthew Campbell
Images are insanely slow to load on this blog post, either they are enormous or you need a cdn
Ben
Around 15MB of images, most of the data transfer comes from large (2MB+) PNGs… Perhaps they could be re-compressed as JPEGs? I bet that would help, especially if folks are reading the post on a mobile phone with a dodgy 3G or even 2G connection!
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Just fixed: one of us grabbed the images from the “for print” folder rather than the “for web” folder.
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker
🤦♀️
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
You TOTALLY outed yourself there. Must do better.
UKScone
Never admit anything. The reply is always “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”
Bill Melendez
Actually reducing the color depth is a better solution while maintaining the same resolution.
Janghou
Good, there is hope at the horizon!
What about the Zero 2? (the one I’m most interested in)
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Not yet, but it’s on the horizon.
Rodigas
😓
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
This is something else that will improve through 2023. Expecting to receive silicon for 50-100ku of RP3A0 (our system-in-package for Zero 2W) in Q1.
Tom
Is there an outline of what this hopes to offer somewhere?
John S.
” split across Zero W, 3A+ and the 2GB and 4GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4″
… and why not 8GB??
James Hughes
Because its not as popular as the other models, 2 and 4 are the best sellers. For the majority of tasks a 4GB device will be more than adequate.
DDS
Pi 4 with 8GB RAM is usefull as a low-power virtual machine host.
Werdrew
Yes, 8GB is good for VMs, it’s good for container workloads, it’s good for databases, it’s good for ML tasks. There are many more, but those are just the ones I could have made good use of 16GB for.
Nick
They didn’t say it wasn’t useful, they said it wasn’t as popular. Which it isn’t.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Chip allocations are coming in one by one. We know when we’re getting them, so we can be confident that the supply will be there, but we don’t have our hands on everything yet, and as you can see from the post you’re replying to, we won’t until early next year.
Andy Warburton
So excited. I never quite managed to get my hands on a Pi4 but I’m really hoping to get my hands on one next year to build a NAS for my new home!
Fred
Great news, Eben! Thank you for sharing.
I have read with interest about additional capacity being built by major semiconductor fabs to increase capacity to produce 28nm wafers. I am not sure about the other Raspberry Pi products, but this will surely help with the supply of the Raspberry Pi 4B which I suspect is the reason why availability should increase next year as production capacity increases.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
This, and migration of other 28nm customers to newer nodes, is a major contributor to the improvement we’re seeing as 2023 goes on.
Peter Berrett
Its time for a new generation of Raspberry Pis Eben.
Please include some EMMC Flash memory in the next iteration. Booting off USB sticks and SD cards is not ideal
Laurent
You don’t need to wait for a future generation: just use a compute module with one of several existing base boards (some has the same form factor of the regular Pi)!
Hank Barta
In addition, the CM4 brings a PCIe x1 lane to the connecters and some boards put that into a PCIe x1 slot or NVME slot, either of which provides disk connectivity w/out USB.
Paride
And a best power connector, for example a standard barrel connector
Nick
> always buy from an Approved Reseller (they’re under contract with us to sell at no more than the RRP);
Are SB Components approved? They are listed on rpilocator but they charge way over RRP for the boards (Pi 4 4GB was £75.99 most recently) and also very high shipping costs (cheapest is £7+). I am sticking to the other retailers on there.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
No, SB Components are not Approved Resellers. We’ve let rpilocator know that.
David
Hmm… RPishop.cz claims to be approved yet their prices, at least for the 4B, have been steadily climbing thtoughout the shortage. 1GB model went from original 33.34€ to 44.62, 2GB from 46.69€ to 55.58 and so forth (8GB now sits at 91.31€!) – yet all are continuously sold out anyway and the only thing that’s in stock are the (even more overpriced) bundles. If I was willing to pay scalper prices I’d order from a scalper that at least has the product in stock…
S Rose
It would be useful to offer a maintained list of approved resellers in a central location so there is no need for consumers (or API providers) to guess. My search for one failed to hit.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
If you visit the product pages on this website, a dropdown menu there will point you at the ARs who are able to service your geographical area.
Matthew
Yes, but for Czech and Slovak republic is only RPIshop.cz, and farnell… and farnell has awfully high shipping costs. Which means RPIshop has monopoly and can set prices however they like…
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker
If they’re an Approved Reseller, they aren’t allowed to sell our boards for more than the prices we set.
Steve Cooper
Looks as if they’ve listened as they aren’t appearing today :)
Laurent
I’m not sure to understand: the price of Pi Zero W will increase to $15, but you didn’t mention anything about the Pi Zero 2 (W).
Does it mean that they will be sold at the same price ?
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We’re currently planning to keep Zero 2W at $15, though we have pretty thin margins at that price point. It’s consistent with our historical practice of bringing new products in at the same price as their predecessor (albeit we got there via a round-about route this time).
Matt Eckerle
Is the idea that freeing up bulk sale of the original z-dub against single unit sales of the z2-dub will even out the price anomoly? Love the zero but hard to see buying it when I can get a z2 for the same price.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We expect most non-industrial Zero W volume to migrate to Zero 2W in due course, and that Zero 2W will be available without constraints. But that will happen later in 2023.
Alan Robertson
Fantastic news, thanks for the update Eben. Great to see the Pi0W coming back, still great value even with the price increase for low power USB-powered requirements, esp with OTG functionality 👍
Fred Cee
It doesn’t seem to have improved supply of the Zero2Ws.
None of the approved seller had any at all since Jun. My preferred supplier hasn’t had any since May, and the 2 main commercial suppliers have never shown any stock since RPiLocator was launched.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Please read the article you’re replying to!
Hebert
Please, tell us that a new Raspberry Pi flagship (Pi 5 maybe?) Is incoming with AV1 hardware decoding playback?
thagrol
I doubt they will as neither products nor specs of them get announced to the public prior to launch day.
thagrol
So what does the $5 price increase on zero(w) mean for zero2w and 3A+?
$15 for a zerow makes it the same price as a zero2w. Adding $5 to the price of a zero2w makes it the same price as a 3A+.
Is something going to be discontinued or will the prices of the zero2w and 3A+ be going up as well?
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We’re keeping Zero 2W at $15. Note that 3A+ costs $25 (1A+ is $20), so there would be scope to move Zero 2W up if we saw further margin degradation.
thagrol
Thanks for the info and the correction. I hadn’t realised the A+ was still in production.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We’re still proudly sitting at only five products ever EOL’d (Raspberry Pi 1A and 1B, Camera Module 1 visible and NoIR, and the WiFi dongle).
solar3000
Thanks!
Thank you!
fanoush
Oh,, too bad the list does not include Zero 2W and CM4 -practically the only ones worth getting today for me. CM4 is ultimately versatile with many base boards available (even one with VIA805 imitating Pi4). Zero W2 is not armv6 anymore (and you can turn off cores to save power). And with Zero W increase to $15 they are now the same price. Well unless we get similar price increase once 2W becomes available. Anyway, this is still very good news for anyone wanting listed models, Merry Christmas :-)
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
Note BerryBase have done a good job of keeping CM4 variants in stock for single-unit orders this year. And volume commercial/industrial orders can get support via business@raspberrypi.com.
RM
Except Berry Base doesn’t sell to all countries. So where I’m located I can’t get them if they are the only retailer carrying them. If they are going to one retailer maybe it should be someone that sells to any country?
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
I think you’re misunderstanding: Berry Base are not the only retailer, although they do choose to stock more CMs than some other retailers. Please go to rpilocator.com – whenever stock appears in at an AR it’ll get listed there.
Happy Camper
Thank you! BTW, I am greatly impressed by the cooling metal plate in the Pi 400 (allowing the Pi to run 24/7 full load at 2.2Ghz) and would like to see it used, twisted into shape, as the cooler/enclosure for Pi 4. If you do this, there is every chance you will sell many thousands of units, not only to me but to many others. Thanks again.
Nicklas Chapman
Happy Camper, there are plenty of passive cooling cases on the market if you want to add that.
Danny
How come some approved resellers sell for above MSRP? (Sb components, 330ohms, Welectron, pishop)
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Usually it’s because there will be tax or tariffs to pay; those costs will be folded into the final price. On occasions where ARs have been selling at inflated prices without a reason, we’ve terminated the contract.
Ryan
This is great news!
What about the authorized resellers that have only (or almost only) been selling kits at extreme mark ups. I have seen pishop.ca sell there kits for more than if you bought every component separately from there site!
MW
The Authorised Re-Sellers only have to sell Raspberry Pi Trading Products at the correct price ( all are sold in $ worldwide ).
RPT can not dictate what prices are charged for other products, postage and packing etal, if one feels a Re-Seller is not being fair, do not buy from them.
TCJ
There is a category of customers between commercial and makers. Years ago I standardized our thin clients (computers used to connect to a remote desktop server) on the RPI. It was great until the crash. I really need about 10 units to do some upgrades and expansion. I have two PI4 cases waiting for boards. The only backups I’ve been able to source are 400s which are not great in this application.
With a limit of 1 per person, it’s impossible to do any projects. Glad to hear you are recovering and I get it that all this was way beyond your control. I just wish there was a way that SMB customers could get a bit of allocation.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
This is a very good point. Internally we call this use case “DIY industrial”: people buying small-medium volumes for their own use in a commercial environment. We’ve really struggled to come up with a story for this space, as it’s very labour intensive to detect “true demand”, and to discriminate between legitimate customers and eBay “entrepreneurs”.
Bill Dunn
I suggest telling the corporate customers to hold their horses for a month, and allocate an entire month’s production, maybe January 2023 at this point to the retail/DIY channel. Corporate have had preference long enough.
Valentin
Dear Eben this said in kindness;
Industry-customers getting high-volume I ‘understand’ is a need to keep ’em on the platform future-wise.
BUT the original idea to get children (etc.) into the world of computers (and its science) at a affordable cost in my view clash with letting the big £ get ‘ahead’ in the queue …
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Schools buy from us on the same basis that other businesses do. And remember: every single penny of profit we make goes to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, whose entire mission is educating children and training teachers in computing.
Valentin
Jaer oh well … not wot I meant ;P
(I recon I’m not intelligent enough to explain it)
Tyeth Gundry
Can you do it like multipack crisps in the UK, stamp not for resale loudly on boxes. Then go and stick serilised qr codes (gs1 digitalLink) on box too and get loyal customers to snitch on ebay sellers when they scan the qr code for setup instructions etc.
John
This is progress and it feels right that some should get in to the hands of future innovators this holiday season. But has anyone at RPi Towers tried doing any secret shopper activity with the independent websites (ie, not Amz or eBay)? Bundling with inflated price accessories seems the norm, if SB Components isn’t an AR, where do they get the stock that pops up on their site so regularly? But the worst is BerryBase who should be politely and very firmly told that having CM4’s lying about on the shelf for weeks whilst cherry picking the countries it feels is most convenient to ship to is just plain rude. Quite why they can’t ship to the UK I can’t imagine. Nor will they ship to an EU address paid for by a UK credit card. To even add a CM4 to basket you have to be in their club and they have some obscure screening mechanism for who they choose to let in. Obscure in that email requests to try to find a way are pretty blunt in response. Meanwhile the carrier boards & accessories we did get for product development before it all went horribly wrong are gathering dust on the shelf for the love of a couple or three mid-range CM4s. Perhaps ARs should be required to enable the taking of single product advanced orders. For us, investing in pre-payment even with no delivery timescales would be better than hammering away at RPiLocator. And as we’d have put our money where our mouth is, the AR can report back what’s actually wanted, you could divert a small amount to fulfil those orders without totally messing up the contracted commercial stuff knowing it’s going to be put to good use by peeps that are watching business development opportunities wither on the vine. I doubt the scalpers would be happy to pay up front for ones or twos with no visible delivery dates. At the very least, perhaps some batch tracing could be employed and find out where they are getting them from.
Bill Dunn
We need some kind of solution for sure.
Wolfgang
I’m not DIY industrial, more like an enthusiast. So I backed up the Turing Pi 2. Meanwhile I managed to get ONE single CM4. Just 3 more missing… This shortage is really bad for the infrastructure around the Raspberry which makes it ways more valuable than for example Odroid SBCs.
Sunny Morgan
Great news. Will that apply to resellers in the Global South too? Places like South Africa for instance?
Official resellers are RS Components and the PiShop
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
It will, yes. RS are not an AR, but The PiShop in SA is.
Brian Beuken
Nice to hear that supplies are coming but very worried not to see Pi400 in that vendor list. We just order 25 units for our university and hope that they get here in a few months, but maybe its going to be longer?
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
We do have components set aside to build Pi400s – there are at least sufficient for some tens of thousands.
Brian Beuken
Thank you Liz, good to hear.
DDS
Let’s hope it will finally be possible to get a Pi 4 without paying 2x MSRP.
MW
Many people have managed to buy at MSRP from AR’s, obviously you have not been active enough to actually achieve a purchase and now complain about Scalpers, which RPT have no control over. This subject has been widely discussed and regurgitated in the Forum’s, which is a better place to discuss your displeasure…
Bill Dunn
This doesn’t seem to make any real comment on CM4, unless that is just lumped in with the RPi4. RPIlocator seems to show the same usual miserable story. I can’t remember the last time I actually saw any actual stock in the USA, Europe (Germany usually) seems to have a few most often.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
BerryBase have been pretty consistently in stock for single-unit orders of at least some SKUs. CM4 is mostly a commercial/industrial product, and this post was aimed mostly at enthusiasts. But yes, we could do with finding a single-unit outlet in North America.
David Clond
You mention in your post,
“BerryBase have been pretty consistently in stock for single-unit orders of at least some SKUs. CM4 is mostly a commercial/industrial product, and this post was aimed mostly at enthusiasts. But yes, we could do with finding a single-unit outlet in North America.”
I understand Turing Pi is seeking to sell CM4 for their cluster board. While they ship internationally, I believe they are based in the USA.
Them and other small form factor cluster board manufactures target the market is the hobbyists, enthusiasts, and developers learning clustering. How do you view resellers selling 1-6 units per customer for this purpose? They are targeting the single user, but due to the nature of the technology multiple CM4 boards are necessary to populate the cluster board.
Bill Dunn
TuringPI is pretty much why I am personally seeking to get ahold of some CM4 boards, but they are nearly impossible to get anywhere near retail in the USA. Very frustrating.
I have a couple of other projects that I want to work on that require the CM4 board as well.
Bill Dunn
I thought a bit about this comment, and I am confused, are these not Adafruit, digi-key, pishop, and sparkfun supposed to be our US sources for PI boards?
Not that any of these seem to have seen any stock, and in particular the kind of stock (CM4/8GB/32GB and PI 4 8GB) I am looking for anytime recently.
DaveK
Thanks for the update, no more driving 2 hours each way to just get one Pico of each flavor. My home hobby room will appreciate the additional stock :)
MW
The Pico is available in multiple quantities from many Authorised Re-Sellers. Maybe try a different Authorised Re-Seller ??
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
Where are you seeing Pico unit limits? Let us know and (if it’s an Approved Reseller) we’ll put a stop to it.
Bigtrucker26
A couple weeks ago I stopped in at the local microcenter to try to get a (or 2) pi4, cm4, for backlog projects, and a couple picos to experiment with… well, I don’t think they’ve ever gotten cm4, they sold out the pi4s while I was driving there (it’s a hour and half to 2 hour drive). They also gave me a speal about needing to physically bring people with me to buy more than one pi (including pico) at a time (even when I stated I wanted to drop off half the picos I wanted to buy to my dad, so he could experiment with them too (he’s done far more work towards converting his home into a smart home than I have, and the Pico sounds ideal for that…
BTW, I want the cm4 for a couple boards for router, homeassistant (poe version), maybe even a board with the in/outputs that would be more convenient for a digital dash and stereo project for my truck(s). So, yeah, I’m interested in a couple cm4’s because they can be a better match by getting different boards… There is definitely demand in the maker community for individual cm4 sales, but most of us aren’t willing to consider $150-250 usd for a pi (as advertised on Amazon). Microcenter even has boards for cm4, if by some miracle you somehow managed to get one…
Btw- microcenter has honored the pricing to the best of my knowledge, they just haven’t had inventory to speak of since plague of fear…
JW
This is good news, thanks for the update. The scalpers out there are making a mad profit right now selling the rpi4 at 4x the RRP. The quicker we can crush them the better for everybody.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We’ve got pretty good at keeping units out of their hands (at least at scale), but I’m hoping we can stick the scalpers with lots of unwanted inventory at the point things turn around. Some losses to make up for the profits they’ve made at our expense during the shortage.
Juan Simon
I love and appreciate how both Liz and Eben are both taking the time for replying to many comments/questions for this article. Keep up the good work!
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
Thank you! We’re both looking forward to things getting back to normal.
Roberto Previtera
These are good news indeed!
Will there be an A+ 4 in the future? With “Model A” form factor or, perhaps even better, with the Compute Module form factor?
Thanks!
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
We normally like to open up at least a $10 gap between the A and B variants, and for a variety of reasons it’s a little hard to do this in the Raspberry Pi 4 generation. But we’ll come back to this once all our existing products are in a robust stock position.
Ian Farquhar
When are we likely to see CM3?
As someone who took delivery of a Turing Pi just as the supply chain issues hit, my “cluster” consisting of a single CM3 seems a little sad. 🤣 I literally got the very last CM3 in Australia.
Thank you so much for the update, and I know this has been a really challenging issue.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
I think single-unit supply of CM3/3+ is likely to be one of the later things to recover, perhaps in late Q2 or early Q3. For products like this, with a significant industrial customer base, it’s very hard to stop them getting hoovered up into the grey market.
Turing Pi Consumer
Dear Eben,
Would there be any appetite for the rpi foundation / authorized resellers to certify Turing Pi owners to secure compatible Compute Modules.
Similar to OP – I purchased 2x Turing Pi (original), and have a Turing Pi 2 on it’s way. Both my Turing Pi (originals) are out of warranty, but haven’t even been unboxed due to supply issues. And, same as OP – I purchased these before the supply chain issues from an authorized reseller – on backorder since July 2021. (which I can also demonstrate).
Thanks for your time,
David Holman
Will there be Pi 3B or 3B+ models again please? The BATC Portsdown amateur TV transceiver depend on 3Bs for some of the earlier models that are still supported. The later ones use Pi4s. Any way I have had a few electrical accidents and need some replacements!
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
Some 3B and 3B+ will make their way into the single-unit market over the next few months, but as I’ve said in response to other posts they’re so popular in industrial applications that it’s hard to keep them from being hoovered up by bots. Doing our best!
Ben
You could try putting a wanted up in the forum (i think there is an area) see if there is anyone close by that now doesn’t use theirs and can donate etc.
Or keep an eye out for reuse/refurb at Okdo, they have cropped up a few times now.
Matthew
Good news, but still – shortage would not be so critical if you stop selling to commercial and industrial customers. Limit them same way as hobbyist. Force a ban to let them resell a Rpi kits – putting a 10euro worth of accesories for twice the price of Rpi board, meanwhile RPI4 boards not available. If there is any kit for Rpi, anyone should buy a Rpi for it separately. Any commercial organization run for profit is able to afford different price range of SBC, that hobbyist usually cannot / don’t want to. All who want to start with programming or projects for IOT or whatever (well there are endless possibilities) are put on hold, imagine how meany people are missing opportunities due to this. And not a better way that during winter break time…
Jony
Hi Eben, thanks for update and good news! Please may I ask if 3B+ will be still in production plan. Thanks.
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
3B+ is in production, and will remain in production until at least January 2026 (and probably much longer). We sold 635k 3B and 3B+ units in the ten months to the end of October, so these are still very popular.
ed street
What would be super good is a base board with user-added eMMC memory and RAM. This would greatly help the 3D printer community, which has been under heavy growth over the past few years.
The cm4 is a step in the right direction, but more is needed. Do these 100k units include CM4 boards as well?
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
A Raspberry Pi SBC with on-board eMMC is a common request: I think it’s fair to say we’d be making one now if we weren’t in a constraint situation on current products, and we’re likely to come back to the idea later in 2023. The 100ku is just Raspberry Pi 3A+, Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi Zero W units. CM4 production is dedicated to the industrial and commercial market, though we’ll continue to get some volume to (e.g.) BerryBase for single-unit sales.
Bill Dunn
As you mention in a different comment we in the USA really need a way to get ahold of some CM4 stock. Ordering from Germany is kind of a pain, and the only stock I can find on these in the USA is generally at extreme markup via Amazon scalpers, or retailers putting them in some kind of kit. It would really help if at least Amazon or Microcenter could get some actual stock themselves to sell at MSRP.
Afreez
Really appreciate your hard work, hope all can own their own Pi board easily as before, thanks!
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
Thank you! Nearly there now.
TheDiveO
Problem is that RPi 4/8GBs are not very long lived in my experience, with the red LED of death morsing a failed voltage regulator. Life time expectancy seems to be below 2yrs with large passive cooling and mostly idle operation with 24/365 powered on. Maybe the quality of the voltage regs is a weak spot. Definitely not industrial grade.
Jean
Would you say the CM4 with EMMC plugged on the IO Board is a better durable solution?
crumble
I had no problem with long running pis. I killed mine by updating firmware or wrong voltages. Its easy to missplace an GPIO adapter by one row.
A pi out of the box ist not tought at all. If you can deal with downtimes and have a nice environment, then it runs very well. There are better systems if you have to harden him for tough environments. But there are many tasks in more or less clean environments.
Bigtrucker26
Really, your pi4 4/8 gb aren’t lasting?
I have a near launch 8gb that has been plugged in via pi-wall wort running openmediavault since I got it new… I’ve had to swap the memory card once or twice, but it’s the same pi… and I have also recently started running a couple dockers on it as well, since it mostly just sits around waiting for me to want something… and I never added any cooling, just a plastic case to protect it and hold it in place…
Anders
None of my Raspberry Pi 4bs, including the 8GB ones have failed. All have been 100% since launch.
TheDiveO
You lucky one!
James Hughes
Not really; you appear to have been unlucky. The Pi4 is very robust, and we have had very few reports of failures (compared with sales).
TheDiveO
BTW, uses the official 3A USBC power supply and I’m not using mSD but instead have an ATA-SSD with very moderate power consumption but sufficient performance attached via one of the few reliably working SSD enclosures with real Linux support (not just on paper).
Chris Melikian
Which SSD enclosure did you use please?
Matha Goram
Thanks for the detailed explanations. Very few companies provide the details. I’ll keep waiting patiently for a few Zero 2Ws as I have since Aug ’21.
Nhan
CM4 please, I’ve waited for a year for it.
Ponder Stibbons
I’m having trouble getting hold of a raspberry pi from an approved reseller, two of my friends are also having problems.
My friend Marvin needs a pico for an upgrade, although he may have got around it as he keeps saying ‘what’s the point’. My other very good friend Sauron needs to upgrade the All-seeing-eye which has developed a squint. But Pimoroni won’t ship to Gardens of Isengard, Ankh-Morpork or Magrathea. I’ve got a relative in Narnia who is experiencing issues too.
I’m at a loss what to do. I’ve consulted The HH Guide to the Galaxy and all it says is DON’T PANIC in big friendly letters…
Yours Sincerely
Ponder Stibbons
℅ Lab 6b (Hex), High Energy Magic Building, Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork
Ref : Pimoroni’s shipping info on website…
Konstantin
I live in Ukraine, can I buy a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B for home use?
Lee Boulineau
Good news. Hopefully the 8GB will become less scarce in the coming months!!
Pencoys
Happy noises but I’ll believe it when I see it.
RPi3A+ and possibly RPi0 could do with more memory about 3.5Gb more.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
I could do with a small Mediterranean principality, but the world is the way the world is.
Jerry H.
Hope that the PI 3 A+ continues to be built for years to come. Among them all this is the most functional lowest power consumption board available. We use it in our robots because you can get a 6 hour operation with 2 18650 batteries. We run a logitech webcam with two way audio, tt motors / wheels, and text to speech functions. Perfect for STEM Kits. Controlled over the web!
No way you get more than an hour run time with the 3 or 4 B+ boards. The 3 A+ is perfect for small robots!
Steve
Hooray!
News supply’s, at last, approaching demand (Q3 ’23?) prompts cheeky questions: any upgrades planned for Pi4 or will it be a leap all the way to Pi5? 🤔😉
Dave
Even if the price rose a bit, I’m over the moon! Can’t wait to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a couple others. During the Pandemic, I’ve just been sitting around, watching technologies advance, and thinking of all the things I could potentially make/deploy for my agency’s research and monitoring tasks.
I know it’s probably not the usual way, but I intend to buy them for myself, create the prototypes, and then apply for grants through my agency for more units’ purchase and deployment.
~Eagerly awaiting 2023 Raspberry Pi Distribution for Purchase!!
Amgine
I didn’t waste my time reading the whole article.
The “supply chain” claim happens to be complete bullshit: the shipping industry has been cutting Atlantic crossings for months to stop losing money on under-full ships. Propping up price – or at least shareholder returns – is the only still-standing reason for supply chain issues, has been since end of 2021.
If your suppliers will not provide the requirements at the price point, find other more-local suppliers, or build it yourself, or build a company to build it locally. Even if the component(s) increase in cost. Because dumping the unreliable/variable priced supplier is insurance against a future circumstance.
Which is what I did.
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
Thank you for the very helpful advice. We’ll get spinning up our own semiconductor fab right now: I have no idea why that didn’t occur to us earlier. By the way, do you have £20 billion? We’ll need it to build the fab.
Bill Dunn
Good comeback! I fully approve!
Amgine
Well, I have to admit I was surprised I could only find 12 semiconductor manufacturers in the UK, and I think only 4 with 28u capability. You may have to look in the EU.
But then, you already have a corporate market, and it’s huge! So you don’t need little old me, a hobbyist. As you have made abundantly clear.
MW
…are you a professional naysayer ??
Steve
Rubbish. The scarcity of Raspberry Pis is from the over-demand for microchips from manufacturers. Shipping costs, in terms of the value of orders, renain well below 1%.
tom
Great news. It would great to try get a supply of programmed MXL7704`s. When messing around
with gpio pins. Its so easy to kill it. As I found
out. its about 90 euro + for the kit to programme
it at home.
ArKay
With COVID currently on the rise on China, who knows what the future brings?
RM
We really could use some CM4s. It’s really a shame that these are going to commercial customers or someplace like BerryBase that only sells to specific countries. Also think about selling direct. This would allow queues for real people to get some of this product and not end up on eBay for two to three times the retail price.
John Arnold
Delighted to hear that the stock situation will improve soon. I use Raspberry Pis in my business making useful little doo-dads that make our jobs easier. Love what you guys do!
Zed
well, here in mooseland (Canada) we havent seen a single rpi product in almost 2 years now.
i’ve been waiting patiently to get my hands on 2 4b 8gb, one for my 3d printing projects and the other for 3d scanning projects. no luck so far..
hopefully we will get some products before 2024
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
You REALLY need to be checking rpilocator.com – I have it open in a tab all the time and stock regularly comes available in your part of the world.
Zed
The only model that was seen recently was the 4gb model (RPI4-MODBP-4GB), and that was in june. The “last stock” tab doesnt even show a date for the 8gb version (RPI4-MODBP-8GB)
so yeah idk where you get that info.. there is 2 official reseller in canada (only) and only one shows up on rpilocator.com.
i have bookmarks that i check everyday to make sure i dont miss a drop
Konstantin
What is the difference between the UK and China RPI boards?
Gray
Any word on availability of non-kit pi boards in the Cambridge store? I need something that supports PoE (Preferably a 4B 1GB) for a project where it will be integrated in an old phone – a little tricky when they only have the full PSU+Keyboard etc kits! :)
Raspberry Pi Staff Liz Upton
No non-kitted ones there today (I’ve just checked) – but 3A+ is available and works with the PoE HAT.
Gray
Is there a special version of the PoE hat for the 3A+? I didn’t think it had the header or ethernet?
Paul N
“…holiday season”? That’s a summer thing, we’re in the festive season!
Raspberry Pi Staff Helen Lynn
I, for one, am on holiday in a festive manner, for every moment of every remaining December and early January day when I’m not modding blog comments. Merry Christmas Paul :)
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker
I haven’t eaten any food that required cutlery or drunk anything an under 18 would be allowed since my last day in the office. I’m already over it.
Neal Roberts
I’ve had backorders paid for since may 22 which were expected October which just keep moving back here in UK – it’s now end April 23 for pi zero (2), I’ve been having to buy used pi zeros here and there at inflated prices (2-3x cost) for Bluetooth converters I make for fitness bikes which I sell worldwide. I’ve had no choice but to do this as if I have no stock, I loose out on a sale – so profit is down just to keep myself/business afloat – even sold a new pi zero 2 I had ‘spare’ just to try and balance the books as they’re selling for x2 cost (the original zeros are fine for my needs).
I’m disappointed industry has gotten ALL the stock this year – leaving us small users High and Dry!
zouyulin
Thank you for the good news, but as a Chinese user, I only have a PI3B on hand, the performance is completely insufficient, I am very excited to get this news, the price of China’s Raspberry Pi is finally coming down!
Ali Berk
Great news! It will be wonderful to be able to find and use Raspberry Pi products at a reasonable price again.
Ivan
Seems to me that nothing changed. Cannot find a single Pi4 at “human” price.
Raspberry Pi Staff Helen Lynn
Like Eben says above, try rpilocator, showing plenty of green lines for availability at standard prices from approved resellers right now: https://rpilocator.com/
Jat
Are any rpi4 8gb models restocking?
Sebastiaan
Thanks for the supply chain update.
1 month ago I contacted business@raspberrypi.com to order 800 Raspberry Pi’s. A follow-up email was sent 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately with no response. We need the Raspberry Pi’s in our smart vending. Would love to hear how I can get in touch.
Robert Johnson
if you double price on zero, please also upgrade something.
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker
We have upgraded our ability to still produce them despite the price of all the components increasing.
Sabine
Hear hear! 🤘
Unlimited Zero is a huge upgrade, even if it’s $5 more. ❤