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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

For added context, Raspberry Pi announced[1] that they're currently prioritizing industrial and commercial customers instead of retail channels for Pis like the Pi 4 model B and Compute Module 4.

It seems like they're also making fewer of the older model Pis (though I don't know if this is confirmed) since the silicon for the BCM2711 can be had in greater quantities than the older chips in the 3B+, 3+, and earlier models.

They're making 500,000 units per month, supposedly (though I don't doubt it), with a million or two orders in the backlog.

I know most people I've talked to who want to order anything less than multiple hundreds of units are unable to do so right now, and scalpers on eBay and Amazon are charging outrageous prices for the few Pis that end up in circulation :(

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain...

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From memory the RPI mission was to make cheap compute available to everyday people.

I wonder what went into the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers?

I fully accept there is nuance and difficulty to mass hardware production & sales that I have no knowledge about, so this isn't an accusation of anything :)

I was under the impression that the decision to prioritize industrial & commercial customers was a temporary one during the current shortages. At least, I certainly hope that is the case.

> Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake.

Also bear in mind that most* educational needs can be met by the Pi 400, which generally hasn't suffered a shortage to the same degree. So they can often be satisfied by the 400 whereas the industrial/commercial uses are typically more constrained (esp. if it's a design based on the compute module)

* - but perhaps not all, in case there are some pedants

From https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain... :

>> "...supply constraints have prevented us from flexing up to meet this demand..."

Wish they would have elaborated more on what kind of supply constraints they are facing. Is there a limit to how many microchips that they can order that they can't manufacture themselves? Seems to me regardless of the supply constraints, if they raise the price by $20 to $50 and pass that money on to the suppliers that would positively motivate them to increase the supply.

>> Where units do appear, bots often attempt to scalp stock which is then resold at higher prices elsewhere. Many Approved Resellers have implemented single-unit limits to combat this, with Adafruit and others going further and enforcing two-factor authentication – we’re encouraging other Approved Resellers to consider this route.

For as long as the price is artificially constrained, what is there to prevent secret mafia deals between reseller insiders and the bot farm operators, or what is there to prevent the bot farm operators from infiltrating the resellers, and quickly gobbling up the supply as soon as it is available, to sell at market prices for the easy profit??

Thanks for the context. I did notice they were 2x more expensive than the last time I checked on Amazon. I thought it was mostly due to the chip shortage.

I've had success buying a Pi 4 recently using rpilocator's twitter. Installled twitter expressly for this purpose.

They have RSS feeds too, I believe capped at a refresh per minute. But I don't think background tasks on iOS are allowed to refresh that quickly.

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