The verdict is out, the Raspberry Pi Foundation might just be the biggest computer manufacturer ever in the UK. With 5 million units sold in a mere 3 years of its founding, hard not to see that the price tag of $25-$35 for the mini ARM GNU/Linux computers had played a huge role in the success story. $35 is for the Model B and $25 for Model A, making the mini-computer affordable enough to be owned by virtually anyone who’s curious enough.
Initially, Pi’s mission was to get more U.K. students to fall in love with coding, but as it progresses, the foundation had managed to capture the imagination of people outside the educational sector–proving to be especially popular in North America, according to CEO and founder Eben Upton. The foundation has since launched a sequel to the success: the Pi 2, which is 6x faster and double the memory of its predecessor . And the best news is that it all comes in a familiar price tag of $35.
No surprise that Microsoft is keen to have Windows running in the mini-computers. Microsoft intends to offer Windows 10 to Pi for free, and together with the launch of the Pi 2 has doubtlessly put the foundation on the map. Hard to believe that 16 months ago, the foundation has only managed to deliver 1.75million Raspberry Pi. At the start of the year, overall sales were around 4.5M, with gen-one Pi sales clocking at output of 200,000 per month. Still a long way to go to emulate big industry player like Apples which sells 5 million units quarterly.
We think that this means that in just under 3 years, we’ve gone from zero to being the biggest selling UK computer manufacturer ever. Yowza.
— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) February 17, 2015
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