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Raspberry Pi Production Heats Up In UK Surpassing Chinese Production Soon
hypnosec writes "The majority of $35 Raspberry Pi production was shifted to a factory in Wales from China and the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced this week that the factory in Wales has produced its half millionth unit in just over six months. The weekly production has shot up to 40,000 units in the UK factory and that number is 'set to climb further.' The Foundation is optimistic about the Welsh factory and said there will be 'more Made in the U.K. Pis in the world than their Made in China cousins.' The Foundation didn't reveal anything else apart from this, but we already know it sold the millionth Pi back in January."
..demand more RASPBERRY !
So how come it can be done in the UK and still sold at the same price? Either there's a subsidy in place or the manufacturing cost is a negligible part of the selling price.
I want a working one.
I am still trying to get gapless playback out of VLC.
[Never mind VLC -- it's no use.
But I think I've had all major players (pun unintended)
over the past few years -- RB had a memory leak,
Audacious only had the stinking 'horizontal' playlist
display, Amarok was too heavy on a non-KE-user,
etc., etc.]
Chinese or British ? ..
unless of course u are using windoze ..
--
--- Mplayer makes making more media players a useless thing to do
Seems to me the import fees on a completed unit is higher than the total import fees on the individual components.
I'd like to buy one made in USA (or US/Mexico duty-free region along the border), but I probably won't wait...
Ken
Save a Tri Lam, eat a Pi
I have a couple RPis and they are useful learning tools but there is a lot more information that this group could spread to those to help the community. One of those would be why or how they are now able to move/transition production to the UK from China. It would be a great piece of information for the community to understand how they managed that so that others could benefit and perhaps do the same with their own projects.
In general there must be a whole host of lessons learned that could be shared that would help someone else avoid the pitfalls these guys undoubtedly had to work through. I'm interested in the process in general such as choosing a manufacturer, how they went about going through the regulatory hurdles, etc. All the stuff you would want to know if you wanted to take a hobby project and make money on it.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2569
More interesting question is around import duty. I think I read (possibly when last trying to work out where the f*ck my OpenPandora was) that there's different import duties on finished electrical good and components (these being more expensive). Even assuming assembly cost is the same, it means it always costs more to assemble in the UK.
Amazing! You make something available people actually want, and they buy it. No hard push advertising required!
Raise the price to $300, and then see if any "pushing" is required.
I remember posting a comment on Raspberry Pi's forums suggesting that they also offered an UK or even EU-built raspi, even if the price was higher than what they charged for the chinese version. In reply to that suggestion I received one of Liz's trademark sarcastic comments, along with insinuations that this suggestion was based on racism. That lead me to decide not to purchase one. Ever.
Now lo and behold: EU-made versions are outselling Chinese ones. Does that mean Raspberry Pi users are packed with racists and bigots?
That's very interesting, but after reading it up it seems as much like "Made by Sony" as "Made in the UK". Well, it's both of course.
They are producing in the Sony plant in the UK. How Sony does it, I don't know, but presumably they have come up with some sort of financial plan that includes tax breaks and possibly subsidization of some sort to get these produced in the UK at a competing price. Don't forget that import taxes for ICT equipment into the EU are quite hefty. Maybe substantially lower than on electronic components? What I know is that they got a price quoted by Sony that was more than interesting enough to commit to a large number of RPis made in the UK. That number was enough for Sony to re-tool the UK factory and get the special equipment required to mount the memory chips on top of the SoC. That was the main investment for Sony, since they didn't have anything that could do that part of the process. The rest was basically just rearranging existing equipment and staff for this production line.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If it were made by the prince of darkness, I'd agree. In this case, it's made by Sony.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
OMXplayer isn't there yet either. However, recently, they moved from buffer to FIFO, making it theoretically possible to put new files/streams at the end of the FIFO, in theory never stopping playback. Since OMXplayer is the only player using the hardware accelerated playback of the Pi, I'd say people that actually know how to code should put some effort in it. Either that, or get a capable media player to play nice with the libs for hardware acceleration on the Pi...
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
"No hard push advertising required!"
So you don't get the at least once a week slashvertisement, the front page el reg articles, and raspberry pi coming from just about every faucet on the internet?
It was not only advertised, but falsely advertised all over the place. An educational tool. All you need is a keyboard, monitor, power supply. Run scratch, learn programming. It's for the good of our children.
What they didn't tell you was that the USB doesn't work with most of keyboards and mice (I tried about 10 keyboards on mine, some worked better than the other, but none perfectly). They didn't tell you that scratch. while it opens, it's so slow that it's unusable. In fact running an Xorg environment on it is so slow, the only way to use it is as a terminal. Remote terminal because keyboards don't work. Oh, wait. Forgot that the ethernet port drops out all the time also. All well known and documented design issues.
Then the "botched" launch. Or so we thought. Where "the servers went down" and "sold out in minutes". It was all a ploy. Like the "product leaks" and those lines around the Apple stores (well, to Apple's credit, at least their hardware works.).
Wonder how much of those broken million devices are actually used instead of gathering dust. While the "foundation" is shamelessly laughing all the way to the bank. For the good of our children. The scam of our lifetime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
"Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,”"
I think its about time Apple [and the media;shills] stopped making excuses if Sony can manufacture the Rasberry Pi in Wales!?
Apple Noted During State of the Union for US Manufacturing Push
When it was announced Monday that Apple CEO Tim Cook would attend U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address as a guest of the First Lady, many predicted that the Cupertino company would find a mention during the night’s events. That prediction came true tonight, as Mr. Obama mentioned Apple during his address, noting that the Cupertino company was planning to move some manufacturing back to the United States.
Cook said: "This year, Apple will start making Macs in America again".
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-noted-during-state-of-the-union-for-us-manufacturing-push
Mac mini Production May Come to the US
After Apple CEO Tim Cook said that production for one Mac model would be coming to the United States, rumors suggesting he was talking about the Mac Pro or iMac surfaced, and now a new report claims the U.S.-bound model is the Mac mini.
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-noted-during-state-of-the-union-for-us-manufacturing-push
He was/is part of the problem in another sense. Looking up to
him is as well.
I can hear it now, the answer to the 'problem' raised in the NYT
article: "lower wages, clamp down on workers' rights, in short,
more capitalism".
The only true answer is: less oligarchy, which will enable solidarity
to return, which will empower workers, which will give them back
a sense of ownership of their workplace -- in short: less rampant
capitalism.
How do you arrive at that end? I heard the USA is a democratic
society. How about kicking out the aforementioned oligarchy?
Take your life back into your own hands.
The Foundation is optimistic about the Welsh factory and said there will be 'more Made in the U.K. Pis in the world than their Made in China cousins.'
Is there any difference between the ones made in UK and the ones made in China?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Firstly, Apple is now moving manufacturing to the US.
Secondly, Steve Jobs said the problem in the US was:
- NOT the wages, which only increased the cost by a few dollars
- lacking infrastructure (for JIT mfg)
- lack of experienced mfg. engineers, in large numbers
- lack of sufficient numbers of trained staff able to work mfg
- suppliers (integrated and co-located)
The US education system just doesn't produce the right kind of engineer or skilled workers because it hasn't been in demand. The Chinese have a larger pool of workers of every kind, combined with better infrastructure.
Chinese labour accounts for a tiny proportion of the company's costs: $7.10 for each phone, which accounts for about eight hours of assembly. So what would it cost to make the same iPhone in America? The Cresc team took the average wage in the US electronics industry of $21 per hour and calculated that the total production cost would increase to $337.01. That is a big jump – but it still leaves Apple with a gross margin of 46.5% on each iPhone – a level that Cresc's Sukhdev Johal estimates would probably still make it the most profitable phone in the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/23/bad-apple-employ-more-us-workers
I'm all for people learning to develop in a Unix environment and working with hardware but how do we keep this from becoming the Javascript/HTML of the hardware world? What I mean is that too many people learn nothing more than Javascript and HTML and call themselves programmers. How do we encourage people to go beyond the basics and not just build everything based on a Raspberry Pi?
Something tells me this AC needs to do some market research
Apart from the stacked CPU/RAM, the Raspberry PI could be sold as an assemble it yourself kit. All the key components are still produced in Asia, and will be for decades unless Wales wants to invest high-billions in new fabs.
Have gnu, will travel.
Like the first telephone and the first television, Raspberry PI has its flaws. But it started a trend. The desktop PC isn't going away, but it's too much for most people. What's killing PC sales now (along with Win8) is the wave of thumbsticks coming from China, running Android. $79 or less (sure to drop), simple, disposable, take it with you, use it on any screen. Store your data locally, or on any private or public cloud. Use Google's apps, or anybody's. And you can hack/modify it without breaking the law.
Uh, you can't read Slashdot very often?
When it was announced Monday that Apple CEO Tim Cook would attend U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address as a guest of the First Lady, many predicted that the Cupertino company would find a mention during the night’s events. That prediction came true tonight, as Mr. Obama mentioned Apple during his address, noting that the Cupertino company was planning to move some manufacturing back to the United States.
Cook said: "This year, Apple will start making Macs in America again".
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-noted-during-state-of-the-union-for-us-manufacturing-push