One Million Raspberry Pi Computers Baked In The UK

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced an important milestone – it has shipped over one million miniature ARM-based computers from a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales.

The device was designed in Britain and launched in February 2012, but Raspberry Pi boards themselves were manufactured in China until September 2012, due to cheaper production costs.

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Raspberry Pi Foundation was established in 2011, specifically to develop a cheap Linux computer for education.

Raspberry Pi can be connected to a TV or monitor via HDMI. It can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, including office work, Internet browsing and high-definition video playback – all possible through a circuit board the size of a credit card, which costs just over £20.

On the day of its launch, the miniature PC became a trending topic worldwide, briefly gaining more attention in the media than Apple’s iPad 3 launch announcement or Justin Bieber’s birthday.

Since manufacturing was switched to Pencoed, both official distributors have been selling the last of their Chinese stock.

The total number of Raspberry Pi units sold worldwide now stands at 1.75 million– no small feat for a very small computer. The factory responsible for ‘baking’ Pi has also received a number of awards for innovative processes and minimising its environmental impact.

According to the marketing manager of the project Liz Upton, the millionth British Raspberry Pi will be displayed in a gold case at the Foundation’s headquarters, better known as the ‘Pi Towers’.

“The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic example of UK innovation, design and engineering at its best. From the day the product launched we knew the Raspberry Pi would be a success and we wanted to be part of it,” said Steve Dalton OBE, managing director of Sony UK Technology Centre at Pencoed. “We’ve been delighted and staggered by the continuous demand for the Pi across the world and there are no signs of this decreasing anytime soon.”

Even though Rspberry Pi has somewhat outgrown its primary educational purposes, there are plenty of people who believe it is the answer to the current IT skills crisis. Last month, Google released “Coder” – a free, open source tool that turns the miniature computer into a simple web server and web-based development environment.

The hardware ecosystem is also constantly expanding – in May, the Foundation announced the general availability of the first official Raspberry Pi HD camera board.

Do you know how many raspberries are used in the making of Raspberry Pi? Take our quiz!