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Pi became unavailable because of their business model, not because it got popular and bought out.

by aliqot 4y ago

actionfromafar 4y ago
Explain more, please. I'm sure this is obvious to many, but I can only guess. Too much dependency on a single vendor? (Broadcom?)
shagie 4y ago
There were a number of challenges that they had. A recent update from Dec 12, 2022: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-good-news/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-goo... > 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.
- esskay 4y ago
  They've not been too truthful with the community over their supply chain issues. At the peak they were still making north of 100k units a month. It's just that over 95% of those were being sold in bulk to direct B2B customers whilst they made record profits. It's been a rough few months to be a pi community member. The 'its totally a supply problem, out of our control' attitude of the company, and then the uncivil outburst of the co-founders wife on the official Pi social accounts didn't do them any favours. That one was made worse by well known and respected former employees chiming in and mentioning that it was how the company was internally probably didn't help.
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    Was the uncivil outburst in question the attacks on people concerned about them hiring a surveillance cop as their "maker in residence", or was there another uncivil outburst I should know about?
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Yeah they've burned up a lot of goodwill by prioritizing integrators so heavily. Not just work there community but in Broadcom apparently, according to other comments. On the other hand expressif is eating their low end, the pico was too expensive too late. Perhaps they will make a bigger board too. They're much better at integrating with the community than Broadcom, they hired community members like sprite_tm.
  - chriswait 4y ago
    I was curious what you were referring to here, and found this case study which was interesting: https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry-pis-incident-on-the-fediverse/ https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry...

Pi became unavailable because of their business model, not because it got popular and bought out.

by aliqot 4y ago

Pi became unavailable because of their business model, not because it got popular and bought out.

Explain more, please. I'm sure this is obvious to many, but I can only guess. Too much dependency on a single vendor? (Broadcom?)

shagie 4y ago

There were a number of challenges that they had. A recent update from Dec 12, 2022: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-good-news/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-update-its-goo... > 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.

esskay 4y ago
They've not been too truthful with the community over their supply chain issues. At the peak they were still making north of 100k units a month. It's just that over 95% of those were being sold in bulk to direct B2B customers whilst they made record profits. It's been a rough few months to be a pi community member. The 'its totally a supply problem, out of our control' attitude of the company, and then the uncivil outburst of the co-founders wife on the official Pi social accounts didn't do them any favours. That one was made worse by well known and respected former employees chiming in and mentioning that it was how the company was internally probably didn't help.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  Was the uncivil outburst in question the attacks on people concerned about them hiring a surveillance cop as their "maker in residence", or was there another uncivil outburst I should know about?
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Yeah they've burned up a lot of goodwill by prioritizing integrators so heavily. Not just work there community but in Broadcom apparently, according to other comments. On the other hand expressif is eating their low end, the pico was too expensive too late. Perhaps they will make a bigger board too. They're much better at integrating with the community than Broadcom, they hired community members like sprite_tm.
- chriswait 4y ago
  I was curious what you were referring to here, and found this case study which was interesting: https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry-pis-incident-on-the-fediverse/ https://eiara.nz/posts/2022/Dec/09/a-case-study-on-raspberry...