Is The Raspberry Pi Losing Its Spirit?

The Raspberry Pi has been an unabashed success story over the last 12 years, developing into a household name in schools and classrooms around the globe. But as new iterations of the Pi have been developed, new features have been added which have increased its price significantly.

The Pi Foundation has long worn its ambitions on its sleeve, but has the Pi been a victim of its own success? If a new, fresh Raspberry Pi were to be developed in 2024, it might look quite different than it did at its initial launch in 2012. Has the Raspberry Pi slowly lost the spirit of affordability, accessibility, and education that made it great?

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The Pi was always intended for education

ICT classes in schools were the Pi’s original nemesis

When the Raspberry Pi launched in February 2012, no one would’ve predicted the success it has seen. It was developed by a UK-based charity that was frustrated with the inadequacy of middle and high-school ICT (information computer technology) lessons. They compared ICT courses to the ‘typing lessons’ of the past, as they were normally limited to teaching the basics of MS Office. With the intent of broadening the classroom experience, the charity set out to build a bare-bones single-board computer to help students learn foundational programming.

The original Raspberry Pi came in two versions. The organization originally released the Model B, which was available for £15 – or about $19 in 2012. That was followed up with the Raspberry Pi B+, and the cheaper Model A+ in November 2014, which removed some USB ports and featured a slimmed-down design.

The original Pi has moved on

The Pi has become more feature-rich, but that might not be a good thing

Source: Unsplash

Over its iterations, the market for the Raspberry Pi has changed. The full-sized Pi has increasingly become a platform for hobbyists and developers, as it is capable of running everything from NAS to streaming servers of Kubernetes clusters. The specs have improved significantly too, with the latest models sporting onboard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Gigabit Ethernet, making the Pi the perfect platform for a range of great home projects. But this wasn’t the goal of the Pi. It wasn’t intended to become a cheap home server, but to be used as an educational tool that would be affordable enough to be widely accessible. While the success the Pi has found has brought with it a vibrant ecosystem, it may have had the impact of leading the Pi onto a more expensive, pricier design path than was necessary to achieve its goals.

The cost of a Pi has risen

Inflation-adjusted, the original Pi B would cost in the range of $25-$28 now. Instead, the cheapest version of the current Raspberry Pi 5 is priced at $60 (these prices may vary). Availability of the original Pi was a notorious nightmare, and very few people ended up actually paying the original £15 figure; pricing for bulk orders, education, or industry may vary, but it serves to illustrate a point. The Pi has crept up in cost significantly, potentially pricing out some of the key customers it was originally built to support.

Alternative Pi devices have picked up the mantle

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is surely aware that increasing the price of the Pi will price out educational customers looking for a cheap, reliable programming board that can be used in classrooms or by parents who want to help their kids learn programming. They’ve somewhat addressed this with cheaper Pi models. The Pi Zero 2 W is probably the closest modern Pi to the original Pi in both spirit and intention. At an astounding $15 price point, the Pi Zero 2 W has rock-bottom specs (definitely not for running heavy desktop apps) with Wi-Fi, making it the perfect choice for smart home projects.

Similarly, the Pi Pico line is even cheaper and ideal for building onto breadboards or integrating with small electronics. There’s onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth available, but no onboard HDMI – you can pick these up with optional Wi-Fi and pre-soldered pins for under $10.

It should be mentioned that some stock of older Pi devices may still be for sale – the 3B+ will remain in production until at least 2026 – but they also often remain out of stock (potentially a clear sign of the problem with price increases for the new Pi models). It also seems less appealing to buy a product with a significantly shorter support lifespan remaining, especially for educational customers who may be looking to use it for years ahead.

Is the Pi a victim of its success?

The market for the Pi has been far wider than anyone expected

Source: Unsplash

In September 2016, just under five years after launching the original Pi, the Raspberry Pi Foundation posted in celebration of the ten millionth Raspberry Pi soldannouncing a new kit to commemorate the achievement. The blog was written by Eben Upton, the then (and now) Chief Executive of Raspberry Pi Ltd, which is responsible for the engineering and trading activities of the Pi Foundation. Ten million units had been a monumental achievement, and Eben had this to say:

At the time, we thought our lifetime volumes might amount to ten thousand units – if we were lucky.

Yet, early in 2024, the same Chief Executive confirmed to Tom’s Hardware that Pi sales had now broken 57 million units of the original Pi, which rises to 61 million when including versions of the Pi Pico. The success here is astounding, and the Pi has achieved its goals in the education space over the last decade. This volume is at least in part attributable to a wide hobbyist and prosumer market that the Pi was never originally aiming for. However, it seems unfortunate that the increased demand has priced out some of its original audience.

What I’d like to see from the next Raspberry Pi

A renewed focus on education

The success of the Pi has skewed its trajectory, injecting endless opportunities to widen its market with new features suited to homelabbers and tinkerers (like myself!), which is not a bad thing. However, I would like to see a version of the Pi – whether a mainline ‘Raspberry Pi’ or an alternate model – once again squarely targeted at education.

A new Pi might also look to embrace some of the possible technologies of the future, like RISC-Vor perhaps split into two models aimed at a lower price point: first, a ‘software’ Pi with fewer onboard connectors (sans MIPI, 40 pin header), Gigabit Ethernet, and easier headless booting; second, a ‘hardware’ Pi with slower 10/100 Ethernet, perhaps no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but with more onboard connectors.

There are obvious nuances to the Pi’s production, and significant economies of scale at play that make diverging versions difficult, but throwing mud at the wall does serve to make a point that the current Pi is an expensive everyman. A new Pi may capture alternative markets more effectively by being more affordable and specific in its use cases.

Education is more important than ever

The landscape of ICT education in schools has changed significantly since 2012, both in the UK and in the US. But fundamental skills in software and programming are still needed more than ever, and more pupils are continuing on to take CS classes through university. The Pi has been a success in almost every possible way of looking at it, but in the next iteration there is an opportunity for renewed focus on its original goals of being extremely affordable and empowering the next generation of engineers.