Raspberry Pi Sales Exceed 10 Million Units

The Raspberry Pi project was founded as a way of encouraging youngsters to learn programming languages and ensure the future generation has the correct skills. Not only that, the Raspberry Pi is extremely useful for hobbyists who want to create their own software or build a tiny small form-factor system. In particular, the Raspberry Pi was the perfect solution for emulation or as a versatile HTPC. Yesterday, the company’s founder Eben Upton announced that over 10 million units have been sold since the initial unveiling and provided a background on their expectations:

“At the time, we thought our lifetime volumes might amount to ten thousand units – if we were lucky. There was was no expectation that adults would use Raspberry Pi, no expectation of commercial success, and certainly no expectation that four years later we would be manufacturing tens of thousands of units a day in the UK, and exporting Raspberry Pi all over the world.”

“With this in mind, you can imagine how strange it feels to be able to announce that over the last four and a half years we’ve sold a grand total of ten million Raspberry Pis. Thanks to you, we’ve beaten our wildest dreams by three orders of magnitude, and we’re only just getting started. Every time you buy a Raspberry Pi, you help fund both our ongoing engineering work, and our educational outreach programs, including Code Club and Picademy.”

“Very early on, we decided that we would offer the bare-bones Raspberry Pi board without accessories: that way, cost-conscious customers get the lowest possible price, provided they can beg or borrow USB peripherals, a power supply and an SD card. Over the years, Raspberry Pi distributors have built on this, producing some fantastic bundles for people who would rather get everything they need from a single source.”

To celebrate this momentous occasion, the Raspberry Pi team decided to unleash an official Pi Starter Kit which includes everything you could possibly need to start coding. This package is bundled with:

• A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
• An 8GB NOOBS SD card
• An official case
• An official 2.5A multi-region power supply
• An official 1m HDMI cable
• An optical mouse and a keyboard with high-quality scissor-switch action
• A copy of Adventures in Raspberry Pi Foundation Edition

The Raspberry Pi Starter kit is available to order online in the UK from official partners element14 and RS Components, priced at £99+VAT, and will be coming to the rest of the world during the next few weeks.

What have you been using the Raspberry Pi for?