Anyone shopping for a Raspberry Pi this Christmas could be in luck after the company revealed a major influx of devices.
Announcing the news in a blog post entitled “Supply chain update – it’s good news!” (opens in new tab), Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said 100,000 units had been secured for single-unit sales (one unit per customer) and that the Raspberry Pi Zero will be available for bulk purchase in 2023.
Upton added that following earlier worries about supply, Raspberry Pi also expects to have returned to pre-pandemic levels by the second half of 2023, with single-unit sales set to play a big role in helping the company return to its “equilibrium stocking level”.
Raspberry Pi supply
“For the first time in a couple of years of semiconductor supply chain hell, we’ve got some good news for you,” Upton wrote.
“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.”
However the news isn’t all positive, as both the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W will see a $5 price increase.
Upton noted that given the sheer minimalism of the Zero, it had always offered very low margins, and would “no longer be commercially viable at their original price points” given the recent cost increases.
However he added that once the stock issues had been addressed, “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.”
“While we’re not quite out of the woods yet, things are certainly improving,” Upton added, reminding customers that they should always buy from an Approved Reseller to ensure they get the right price.
“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.”
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