Raspberry Pi Announces Supply Chain Shortages And A Price Increase
The pandemic currently impacting most of the world has resulted in significant production shortages for many types of products, particularly those that rely on microchips. Those who like to tinker with electronics often turn to the inexpensive and small Raspberry Pi device. However, some Raspberry Pi developer boards have become difficult to find, and the company has now announced it is facing supply chain shortages.
The developer of the Raspberry Pi has stated that while it and partners at Sony have worked hard to keep the components needed to build the developer boards coming into the factory, they have still been impacted by supply chain shortages. Only about 7 million Raspberry Pi developer boards will be built in 2021.
The company says that is essentially the same output they had in 2020. With the low production levels, there have been some shortages of specific products, including the Raspberry Pi Zero and the Raspberry Pi 4 with two gigabytes of RAM. Raspberry Pi has confirmed that it expects supply chain issues to continue through most of 2022.
Most of the shortages will impact older products that are built on 40 nm process technology. That means for fans of the development board is that products other than the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 400, or Compute Module 4 will be in short supply. Pricing changes will see the Raspberry Pi 4 2 gigabyte temporarily move to $45.
That marks a $10 increase from its $35 standard price. The reason for the $10 increase is increased costs as a result of the current shortage. Raspberry Pi is clear that the product is not economically viable at the $35 price point, but it promises that $45 is only temporary.
The company is also reinstating the one gigabyte Raspberry Pi 4 for $35. The company says it's going to make changes to help customers who are buying Raspberry Pi for businesses continue to be successful over the next year. It has also told industrial and embedded users of the Raspberry Pi 3B+ that want to optimize operations for 2022 to migrate their designs to the one-gigabyte version of the Raspberry Pi 4.