As stocks of the many Raspberry Pi models steadily improve, we're now coming to the end of a difficult period for the Raspberry Pi community and the world at large. So how bad was it and how is it improving? To learn this we contacted RPiLocator, a service that sprang up to help Raspberry Pi fans to locate precious Raspberry Pis. Thanks to the analytics data provided by RPiLocator we can see the highs and lows of the last year.
Using the number restocks as a proxy for product availability, we can see that Raspberry Pis as a whole were 271% more available in July 2023 than July 2022 (394 restocks versus 106). And, among particular models of Pi, the Pi Zero 2 W grew the most going from 1 to 56 restocks year-over-year.
We have chosen to look back to May, June and July 2022 and compare those months to 2023, to see how things have changed for the better after million unit months were predicted. We also take a look at the holiday season of December 2022, when Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced that more units would hit the sales channels.
Some caveats about our data: We're measuring restocks, not sales / produced units and it covers all of the official resellers across the world. So stock may have only been available in one or two countries (and not necessarily the U.S. or UK). We're only able to measure "weeks in stock" not hours or days so that the model was in stock somewhere for some portion of a week, which could have been less than a day. Raspberry Pi now remains in stock for longer, fewer restocks are required.
Two boards that have remained in stock throughout have been the Raspberry Pi Pico and Raspberry Pi Pico W. These boards may not have gigahertz CPUs and oodles of RAM, but for microcontroller projects they are cheap, easy to source and very easy to use.
Restock Data at a Glance
While we don't know how many Raspberry Pi units were sold, we do know how many restocks were made in a 78 week period between February 6 2022 and July 30 2023 across all of the global official resellers tracked by RPiLocator.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is the clear winner, being in stock for 76 out of 78 weeks, and receiving 918 restocks across all of the official resellers. How many units does that translate to? We don't know, but a restock will not be in single digits.
In second place, and quite a surprise, is the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. The CM4 was in stock for 70 out of 78 weeks and received 388 restocks. The Raspberry Pi saw over 2.4 times more restocks than the CM4. The reason for this is highly likely to be the specialized nature of the CM4, used more in embedded and industrial applications than the full-size Pi 4. This means that more of the CM4 units were sent to industrial customers for use in its products.
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was released in late 2021, but you would be forgiven for thinking that it was a dream. Stock of the Zero 2 W has been low to none for quite some time. In the same 78 week period, the Zero 2 W was restocked 210 times, and was in stock for 52 weeks. Remember that this is across a global reseller network. There were no restocks between 21 August 2022 and 18 September 2022, a long five week period.
The older Raspberry Pi Zero W (in stock 29/78 weeks, 236 restocks) board was not restocked between February 6 2022 and January 8 2023, a 48 week period! This doesn't exclusively mean that the Zero W was out of stock, it could also mean that demand was low and that no further stock was required. But given the global supply shortage, and the eagerness of the community, the former is the most likely scenario.
Raspberry Pi also produced Raspberry Pi 3 and Compute Module 3 units. "Why?" we hear you ask? Well if you don't need the power of Pi 4, or the Zero form factor, then an older Raspberry Pi will do the job just fine. The Raspberry Pi 3 was the third most in stock board, in stock for 55 out of 78 weeks and seeing 294 global restocks. The last Raspberry Pi 3 restock was 23 July 2023.
Bringing up the rear, in last place is the Compute Module 3 which was out of stock for an incredible 71 out of 78 weeks and saw just 11 restocks. There has not been a restock since May 21 2023. The Compute Module 3 was the last to use the SODIMM form factor that was preferred for Compute Modules. The Compute Module 4 introduced two rows of connectors that attached to breakout points on the Compute Module IO board.
Holiday Cheer
In a December 12 blog post, Upton announced that extra units would be passed on to resellers for single unit sales. "As a thank-you to our army of very patient enthusiast customers in the run-up to the holiday season this year, we’ve been able to set aside a little over a hundred thousand units, split across Zero W, 3A+ and the 2GB and 4GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4, for single-unit sales."
These units hit resellers between December 18 and the end of 2022. On December 18 2022, we saw 14 Raspberry Pi restocks, versus 10 the week previous. The Compute Module 4 saw a jump from 4 restocks to 13. On December 25, restocks were lower, returning to a pre-announcement level. January 1 2023 saw restocks drop further.
Source: Eben Upton's tweet.
After this blip, things returned to normal (for a post pandemic supply chain) for the first half of the year. But, June 2023 is where we start to see an uptick in Raspberry Pi availability. Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi CEO released a statement via a Raspberry Pi Community Events newsletter which stated from July 2023 we could expect to see a million units per month.
For Q1 of 2023, there were 800,000 Raspberry Pi units made (we don’t have a breakdown of how many per model). That is three months production and the worst it has been since 2015. The reason for this is down to pulling stock for the holiday period of late December. In May we saw 612,000 units, June 788,000 which saw actual production matching Upton’s predictions.
Looking Back: Comparing July 2022 to July 2023
A year ago, the global chip supply shortage cast a shadow on many aspects of our lives. The Raspberry Pi, initially, weathered the early days of the shortage, but late 2021 saw a gradual decrease in the supply of Raspberry Pi. It wasn't a constant downtrend, more of a roller coaster effect that saw a glut of stock hit resellers to be eagerly purchased.
Since Upton announced that million unit months were ahead, we have seen a steady increase in the number of restocks, and that means more Raspberry Pi are flooding into the sales channels. How does this period in 2023 compare to 2022?
In May 2022 we saw 68 global restocks of Raspberry Pi 4, compared to just 53 in May 2023. In fact restocks most models of Raspberry Pi were down in May 2023 when compared to 2022, the only ones to buck the trend were the Zero W (0 versus 46 in May 2023) and the Compute Module 3 (0 versus 2 in May 2023).
June 2022 and there are 46 restocks of the Raspberry Pi 4 and 16 for the Compute Module 4. Looking to June 2023 and the number of Pi 4 restocks has doubled to 92, while the CM4 receives just nine. Big surprise of this month is 49 Raspberry Pi Zero W in June 2023 versus zero in June 2022.
July 2023 is where we see the biggest number of restocks. Leading the charge is the Raspberry Pi 4 with 238 restocks, versus just 53 in July 2022. The next biggest restock was for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, seeing 56 restocks in July 2023 versus one in July 2022. More Raspberry Pi 3 (36 in 2023, 2 in 2022) and Raspberry Pi Zero W (33 in 2023, 0 in 2022) provide a plentiful, lower cost and adequate platform for most projects. The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is hanging in with 31 restocks in 2023, but a might 50 in 2022. Obviously a large chunk of CM4 stock is going to industrial customers.
The Last Sixty Days
The last 60 days has seen the Raspberry Pi 4 be the clear winner for restocks at 330. In second place is the Raspberry Pi Zero W with 82, and third is the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with 62. Things are looking much better as resellers are clearly getting more product.
RPilocator has a record of the top five resellers per Raspberry Pi board and we can see that the usual suspects (Adafruit, The Pi Hut and Pimoroni) are not in the top spot for any of the boards. Adafruit came second for Raspberry Pi 4 restocks, with 32 restocks in a 60 day period. UK reseller Pimoroni came fifth with 16.
As per Upton's predictions, it seems that 2023 is looking much brighter for our favorite single board computer.
