One million Raspberry Pis sold so far

Folks at element 14/Premier Farnell recently announced in a post that they have made and sold over half a million Raspberry Pis thus far, The post further adds that they are the only one of two official distributors, and they do not have the latest updated figures from from RS Components yet. But the announcement coming from folks at element 14/Premier Farnell suggests that the millionth Raspberry Pi has been sold.

The post on Raspberry Pi’s site also features some interesting trivia from element 14. It says that all of the Pis would weigh as much as 169,173 Nokia 3310s or 200,893 iPhone 5s. Another interesting bit says that if one were to stack each Pi end to end, then it would reach higher than Felix Baumgartner’s world record skydive of 128,000 ft. This way they would also be taller than 111 Empire State Buildings. What’s more, it says users consumers could have spent the $17.5 m on over 4,375,000 chocolate bars. 

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Outs impressive numbers!

In mid-December last year, folks at Raspberry Pi made the launch of the Pi Store official. The store enables developers of all ages to share their games, application, tools and tutorials with the rest of the community. “The Pi Store will, we hope, become a one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi needs; it’s also an easier way into the Raspberry Pi experience for total beginners, who will find everything they need to get going in one place, for free,” the post added further.

The Pi store runs as an X application under Raspbian, using which users can download content and upload their own for moderation and release. Currently, the store houses 23 free titles across categories like utilities (LibreOffice, for eg) to classic games like Freeciv and OpenTTD, as also the Raspberry Pi exclusive Iridium Rising. Interestingly, at the outset, folks at Raspberry Pi will be urging winners of their Summer Programming Contest to upload their entries to the store. The store, however, is open to entries for moderation and release from anyone. 

Interestingly, users can choose whether to make their content available for free or paid. In fact, the Pi store it is learnt comes with a tip jar mechanism. Simply put, even if a user is offering his or her content for free, they will still have the chance of making some money from their development work, if people take a liking to their work. Users can submit binaries, raw Python code, images, audio or video; and soon you’ll be able to submit Scratch content too. The Pi Store will also house media of all kinds related to Raspberry Pi. Going further, the post adds that they are carrying the MagPi, following which they hope they will be able to host as many of user tutorials as possible. 

In October last year, Eben Upton, the founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation announced in an official blog post that Raspberry Pi was shipping with an upgraded RAM of 512MB. What came as even better news was that the upgrade would come at no extra cost to its users. Upton elaborated that the latest version of RPi came after users suggested the launch of “a more expensive “Model C” version of Raspberry Pi with extra RAM.” He shared that such a suggestion would benefit those users who look at Pi as a general-purpose computer, with a host of large applications running at the same time, and would “enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB.”

However, Upton admitted that they intended to keep the $35 price tag as their highest price point. Keeping this into perspective, the announcement pertaining to all Model B Raspberry Pis shipping with 512MB of RAM as standard came into being.