new RPi model B planned soon

I'm really struggluing to understand why you all find this so interesting and keep going on about it. Analysing the Foundation and their distributors sales, orders and all that fluff is all rather pointless I've decided. SO many conspiracies theories being banded about, so many almost certainly rubbish  assumption, when if people just took a quick look, took everything at face value, its all seems fairly bloody obvious. Trying to attach all the other nonsense it really a waste of time. - perhaps people time woudl be better spent actually doing something interesting, like using the damn thing?

It all comes down to...

Unexpected popularity, bad order forcasting by the manufacturers, long chip lead times. Add on a few minor contractual arguments behind the scenes (I thinking the Foundation having the 256's for the Model A) , and you have explained everything.

There, I've simplified it all for you. No need to thank me, although a tinny wouldn't go amiss.

Bill

Roger, a formatting hint.  The way I overcome the idiosyncracies of both forum editors that you've experienced is as follows.

Use the Quote Previous Message (QPM) button to bring in the whole post, and delete everything below the line to which you want to respond.  Add your comment below it.  (This is what you did, once.)

Then for each new section of the post to which you want to reply, use QPM again, delete the top section (including the "XXX writes:") which you already included earlier, and delete the section below the next block to which you want to respond, leaving only the part you want to reference, and write your stuff below it.  Rinse and repeat.

The referenced blocks then come out nice and tidy, which seems to be impossible if you just use QPM once.  The quoted blocks don't react well to being split.

IMHO: that's a workaround which works for me if you need to quote two or three sections. I thought I had found another workaround. I had: I showed fine in the "full editor".

coder27 wrote:

 

I would take "little lower" with a few grains of salt, given that order #169xxx,

ordered on July 21, was reportedly shipped yesterday.

 

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=22508&start=181

I really don't know what to make of it, coder.  The only way forward that comes to mind is to ask for the apparent discrepancy to be explained, and for an actual units shipped figure to be given for RS as they did for Farnell.  Whether it's worth risking your RPF account to obtain a response, well, that's up to each individual to decide.

Really, is it that important? We can guess at the numbers a bit. 30k shipped, 60k shipped, 160k shipped. Or even more. But my guess is it's one of the lower numbers. This would be an embarresment for RS to admit. So they won't. Farnell on the other hand can boast about their number. So they do.

Raspberry pi foundation probably should know about the numbers (because they get a percentage), but contractually they probably don't have the right to tell anybody.

So, RPF won't tell you. RS won't tell you. And my best guess is 60k shipped.

Roger Wolff wrote:

 

Did the distributors balk at making Model A's?

 

No. They might be a bit reluctant to take it up. Especially if their markup can be a bit higher on the $35 version. Even from the beginning I've thought that is a steep markup: $10 for an ethernet/usb chip. Right now the ethernet USB adapters (including PCB and connectors!) sell for $1 on ebay. The Lan9512 sells for EUR 3.41 at mouser if you buy 1000. So price pressure is bigger on the model A.

I would suspect that the magjack would cost at least as much as the LAN9512, and then you've got three LEDs, a crystal, a double-size USB jack, the cost difference between 256MB and 512MB, and a bunch of discretes.  So it's hard to say which is more profitable to make.  I suspect you're right and it's still more profitable to make a Model B, or distributors would be more enthusiastic about selling Model As.

Regarding formatting, I would suggest using italics for questions rather than attempting nested quotations.  I've used Morgaine's trick a couple of times myself, but it's pretty tedious if you have a lot of quotation blocks.

Speaking for myself, I find this activity of trying to understand RPF and distributor behavior from the few tidbits of actual data to be quite interesting.  There are clearly serious problems with how RasPi has been distributed and understanding such problems in detail help prevent future RasPi-like projects from repeating them.

Roger Wolff wrote:

 

So, RPF won't tell you. RS won't tell you. And my best guess is 60k shipped.

There's a difference between RPF simply not saying how many, and RPF stating publicly in writing that RS has shipped "only a little lower" than "429,000 so far".  And 60k is not in the ballpark of "only a little lower" than "429,000 so far".  Either RS has indeed shipped only a little lower than 429k, or the spokesperson is under a very serious misapprehension about the volume shipped, or the third alternative is not a pretty one..  So which is it?

I'd say the second one.

I'd also guess the second one, but that makes me wonder why would she'd have bad information about the number shipped by RS.  Did they misreport the number shipped, are they reporting total orders over total units shipped?  For the third option I could see Liz under contractual obligations to understate how bad RS sales have been in order to protect a business partner.

I wrote:

>> Why would RPF get stuck owning chips if the distributors do all the manufacturing?

Roger wrote:

> The foundation made the first batch. It is unlikely that the minimum order quantity of all chips exactly line up at 10000 units.

> Or, someone at the Foundation had the smarts to think ahead and order some long-lead-time memory chips.

I don't think these are ram chips left over from the first batch.  I think the first batch

was Hynix, and these are Samsung.  Based on the chip markings, I think they are

rather recent Samsung.

> Any multiple-units-per-order would probably cancel the cancelations.

I think the single-order rule was lifted right around the time of the orders that

they are currently delivering, so I don't think multiple orders is a significant factor,

although it may be in the future.  I think Allied was somewhat lax about the

single-order rule, so it may have more effect on their orders.