Did I get a late date for my pi?

[rpiswag]

I ordered a raspberry pi 2 model b and element14.com says it will take till march of 2015 to get it. Is that a late date or is that normal?

[jdb]

Orders are being fulfilled in the order in which they were made. Currently back-orders far outstrip both existing stock and production capacity - Pencoed is churning out 20,000 units per day to meet demand.

The estimated delivery date is an estimate - I would wager that your order will be shipped before that date as a) distributors are conservative on lead times and b) it's hard to predict future trends in sales after such an explosive release.

[rpiswag]

Wow 20,000 pis a day and I thought 5,000 pis a day was a lot! Great job! I know it is hard. Keep up the good work!

[W. H. Heydt]

Heh...

Note to Liz...better have 500+K Pi 3s on hand when it gets launched....or maybe twice that.

[liz]

Heh - if you're offering the up-front capital, Hal, I'm all over it!

[rpiswag]

I think the pi community would love it it the pi foundation had 50,000 pis before they are sold that way they would not run out of stock so fast like on feb 2 with the pi 2 model B. I think the pi community would buy that many pis easily and if it is the pi 2 I would be included. I love Raspberry Pi.

[W. H. Heydt]

Heh - if you're offering the up-front capital, Hal, I'm all over it!

By the time there is a Pi 3, RS, Farnell, and Sony will probably be happy to do the job without money from the RPF. Of course, by the, the RPF may be able to afford it without concern... Two points of past history suggest that we're looking at 2018, and total sales on the order of 10 million...at least.

[plugwash]

The problem is it's very hard to predict how a new model will do. Obviously most of the new purchasers will shift over but what proportion of existing owners will chose to rebuy?

Underestimate the number of rebuys and you end up with frustrated customers, overestimate it and you end up with lots of stock sitting on shelves.

[W. H. Heydt]

I think the pi community would love it it the pi foundation had 50,000 pis before they are sold that way they would not run out of stock so fast like on feb 2 with the pi 2 model B. I think the pi community would buy that many pis easily and if it is the pi 2 I would be included. I love Raspberry Pi.

That's not nearly enough. In the announcement blog, Liz said there were 100,000 available at launch. In the followup blog, she said that 150,000 sold in two days. On top of that, the suppliers (I assume that's who) have ordered 1 *million* more.

Granted, it was tongue in cheek, but saying that a major Pi launch should have 500K to 1 million on hand is not something that is totally unreasonable to support the initial sales, even if it is financially unrealistic.

Think of it this way... At 20K per day production (assuming 5 days per week), it will take 10 weeks just to clear the current backlog of orders, even if no new orders came in. By comparison, the next best selling hobbyist SBC that I know of, the BBB, is probably up to around 220-240K to date. Taking the higher number, the Pencoed factory to could produce as many Pis as there have *ever* been BBBs sold...in 12 days. And note as well, that it is likely that more Pi2B's will sell *this* *week* than BBB's to date (though some of those Pi2Bs will be on backorder)

Another way to look at it is this: In two days, the retail price of the Pi2bs was $5,25 million. The backorder quantity to factory is $35 million. Pencoed can produce $182 million worth of Pis.per year at the current rate.

Note that, at 100K sold (in less than 2 years, at that), the RPF considers the Model A to have been a "failure". There are people in the SBC business that would probably give a major body part to have a "failure" like that.

I would love to be a fly on the wall when some of the other companies talk about Pi sales...

[EMJB]

Ordered a Pi2 this morning from CPC-Farnell. It was reportedly in stock.

EMJB

[liz]

I think the pi community would love it it the pi foundation had 50,000 pis before they are sold that way they would not run out of stock so fast like on feb 2 with the pi 2 model B. I think the pi community would buy that many pis easily and if it is the pi 2 I would be included. I love Raspberry Pi.

Actually, we had 150,000 ready to go on Monday - 100,000 more than you suggest! They were all shipped out to customers early this week. And we still ran out.

[jamesh]

Guy in the office had RS tell him end of February for his, and got it today....

So they are definitely an estimate!