10k Raspberry Pi Units Available In December 123
An anonymous reader writes "A tweet appeared from Raspberry Pi stating the launch of the $25 PC wasn't happening in November as expected. So I decided to investigate further and contacted Raspberry Pi to see what was going on. Eben Upton was kind enough to email me back and give us some good and bad news. The bad news is: we aren't getting the $25 PC this month as expected. But that's where the bad news ends, as it is still arriving in 2011 for some people. Eben confirmed that an order has been placed for 10,000 units, but they won't arrive until the end of November. That means we will see Raspberry Pi go up for sale in December, but it won't be a typical 'get as many out the door as you can' launch. Those first 10k are earmarked for programmers as software is desperately required before a full consumer launch." Update: Apparently some of the details about the production of units and who can get one from the first batch have changed. Raspberry Pi has updated their front page with the latest information.
Re:Delays (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the kind words. I think we're about to learn some fun lessons about what selling tens of thousands of something involves, and we'll be doing it all in public :)
Eben
Re:end of Arduino? (Score:3, Interesting)
Massive agreement with this. We're *big* Arduino fans (and I personally am a big Atmel AVR fan). The few bright spots in computing education right now are around exactly this sort of cheap and cheerful hardware platform. We wouldn't want to do anything to undermine them.
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Re:Delays (Score:4, Interesting)
It's interesting that the community's scepticism about the price point is pretty much inversely related to my own. As we've nailed down the BOM and assembly costs, and become more confident that we have a saleable product with margin, the level of doubt *outside* the foundation has crept up :)
The proof of the business model pudding will be when we've sold 100k and I still have a house.
Eben
Raspberry Pi Foundation