RS Components press release mentions RPi

the way they write these things is always in wall street analist speak and never actually makes much sense to anyone.

On first glance I'd read it as 2% of 5% - or 0.1% which shows just how much nonsense you can hide by using percentages of an unknown.

Also, from my recent "Raspberry Pi – Time to order" email from RS: "Note: We accept payment via Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. Payment will be taken at the time of your order." So with a 14 week estimated time to ship you have to wonder if they're reporting revenue this quarter for something they won't see the negative side of for another two quarters. Or alternatively are they using the cash they've taken early to fund the manufactruing ?

Don't suppose it really matters, this sort of inventive accounting seems to be common for any large enough business and is nothing particularly unusual.

I did think it was a bit cheeky to be taking the money up front though, especially given their lead times and being (slightly) more expensive than Farnell who don't take money up front.

While 282000 does seem high, and previous indications were that Farnell were likely outshipping RS by quite a bit, if they're reporting stuff that won't be shipped for some unknown period but likely at least 14 weeks it may not be all that much of a leap. Especially if you believe what we're told elsewhere on there being 500K+ shipped by the end of the year.

But anyway, for a small cheap gadget like the RPi to be singled out as being 2% of their sales is quite impressive. I wonder what their sales of BeagleBone or other similar small dev boards are like in comparison.

agreed 2% of sales for the first quarter is impressive.

2% of profits would be much more impressive, but they

claim to be selling around breakeven, and not in a

position to raise prices to a profitable level.  Of course,

it would be most impressive if they could redesign it a

bit so it actually worked closer to its potential.

Both Farnell and RS are (ballpark) billion-dollar companies, Premier Farnell quoted at just under a billion revenue and RS's parent Electrocomponents at just over a billion.

In the context of a ballpark $1bn pa., Raspberry Pi is just petty cash, totally hidden in the noise.  Even if they each manufactured 1 million Pi boards and each one cost a full $35 to make, that would still constitute only $35m and the expenditure wouldn't even make a noticeable blip on their revenue charts.

These are huge companies each dealing with an immense product range, and we're in danger of overblowing the direct dollar significance of Pi to either of them.  Until Pi gets into education and many millions of Pi get shipped, it's all just petty cash.

Morgaine.

It's worth noting that for Chinese manufacturing industry, a million Pi boards would be totally imperceptible.

RS and Farnell are having their reputations badly tarnished by the slow rate of production and hence huge customer dissatisfaction, so it's to be expected that they would want to massively ramp up production and terminate the problem as fast as possible.

The fact that Pi boards are being built so slowly must be caused by something outside of their control.  It's neither capacity in China nor investment money, which is just petty cash at these production levels as I mentioned above.

Morgaine.

and the expenditure wouldn't even make a noticeable blip on their revenue charts.

True. Why then do RS feel the need to mention it ?

These are huge companies each dealing with an immense product range,

I think we'll have to disagree on what a huge company is, when they get to 10x their current revenue I'll entertain the notion. Get to 100x and I'll agree.

and we're in danger of overblowing the direct dollar significance of Pi to either of them.

Not sure we're overblowing it. I'm sure we all realise that the Pi is insignificant in terms of their overall revenue and profit.  Keeping that in mind, I still think it's significant that RS chose to mention it.

It's worth noting that for Chinese manufacturing industry, a million Pi boards would be totally imperceptible.

Totally agree.  I used to work in one of the large assembly houses when they still had plants in the UK, experience of that suggests that even 10 years ago a single smt line should have produced a good 2+ million in the last four months.

It's neither capacity in China nor investment money

Parts shortage or capacity is being allocated to more profitable things ?

selsinork wrote:

 

True. Why then do RS feel the need to mention it ?

Because it's totally brilliant corporate PR.  It costs them next to nothing, puts them in an exclusive club, and gives the kind of people at whom corporate statements are targetted a warm glow.

selsinork wrote:

 

Parts shortage or capacity is being allocated to more profitable things ?

That I don't know, and I can't see how to guess validly.  Although it's possible to speculate about LAN9512 or BCM2835 shortages, I doubt we'll ever see any relevant figures.  It may be possible to get some idea by a process of elimination though.

Nothing else on the board seems likely to create component shortages, unless it's the CSI/DSI connectors.  I doubt it though, because passives don't generally have long lead time blockages, and there are usually multiple sources of supply.

If people are not really craving for a Raspberry Pi, I'd recommend them to be patient and what wait until you see them for sale in large numbers on eBay, the number of listings increases every day.

-J

Ha.... I'm craving, craving, slobber, slobber........ Mine will arrive some day for sure!

In the meantime there's an Olimex iMX233-OLINUXINO-MAXI going for £44.95 on ebay against the £50-60+ for the various Pi's on offer.

len3805 wrote:

 

Ha.... I'm craving, craving, slobber, slobber.....

You want craving?  Here's craving, courtesy of John's eagle eye yesterday ... http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G133999328931