The Raspberry Pi is an iconic device, a runaway success made in the UK. It’s inadvertently found itself on the zeitgeist of the Internet of Things, so we’ve been gathering data about its progress. On the occasion of it’s second birthday, why not share them with the world?
Devices sold
The headline number here is “more than 2.5 million”. Speaking to people in the space, there was a general impression that after the initial explosion, the noise was dying down. So we dug for sales numbers. Various numbers had been reported, and we generally went with official numbers where possible.
Here’s what it looks like:
And this is our data:
As you can see this is purely gathered from public sources, if you have any additional data points, please do post them in the comments.
Yes, it’s a cumulative graph (sorry!) since those are the numbers we have access to, but it should make clear that Raspberry Pi sales are remarkably stable: After an initial stage of growth, they are at 3,000+ a day for most of the year, shooting up to 7,000+ a day during the holiday season.
To make a bit of a conjecture, if we accept that there was an initial phase when every hacker was ordering one, then the decline in demand has not been apparent. Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing about deployments of hundreds, or some times thousands of Raspberry Pi in projects that either aren’t interested in or actively avoid publicising that fact. This would explain the noise dying down, while shipments are stable. Indeed it would imply that “real-world” shipments are actually accelerating, which could lead to further growth in the future. If this were so, we’d expect to see some signs of commercial use out in the open.
Startups built on the Raspberry Pi
As usual, startups are first to explore the new territory, at least in public. Here is the data we have gathered on startups using the Raspberry Pi in their products, or whose products encompass a Pi (as opposed to building add-ons/peripherals for the Pi, of which many many more exist).
So far we’ve found 8 startups with concrete Pi-based products we can link to. We’re sure there are more out there, help us complete the list by posting others you know of in the comments.
Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi!
Any questions? or you’d just like to say hi, come find us on our community chat.
