Raspberry Pi Announces First Ever Price Increase Due To Component Shortages

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced the company's first-ever price increase, all because

global component shortage caused byCOVID-19 pandemic. Although the Raspberry Pi could produce up to 7 million units this year, on par with last year's figure, companies are buying up more components than before to enable their products to be built. As a result, the Raspberry Pi Zero and the 2GB variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 are in short supply.

To solve this problem, the manufacturerbrings the price of the Raspberry Pi 4 back from 2GB to $45. The model debuted at that price, but Raspberry Pi dropped it to $35 in 2020 to replace its discontinued 1GB counterpart. According to Upton, rising prices for the components needed to make the boards mean that selling a 2GB Pi 4 for $35 is no longer economically feasible, so the company is temporarily bringing back the old price. It's also reintroducing a 1GB option for $35 to give buyers another option to choose from.

In his post, Upton explained that the problem isproducts based on 40nm silicon will be most affected. Since the company needs to properly distribute components, it decided to prioritize Compute Module 3, Compute Module 3+, and Raspberry Pi 3B, and cancel the Raspberry Pi 3B +. The company is now encouraging industrial users of the Raspberry Pi 3B + to use the 1GB variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 instead.

The CEO stated that these changesare temporary and that changes in pricing will not be long in coming. “As global supply chain issues ease, we will continue to review this issue, and we want to return prices to previous levels as quickly as we can”, – he wrote. However, the company expects supply chain issues to continue throughout 2022.

Source:engadget, raspberrypi

Illustrations: raspberrypi

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