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Where Are the Raspberry Pi Zeros? (i-programmer.info)
mikejuk writes: The Pi Zero was supposed to be available from November 26, 2015. It is now the start of February and all of the stockists, including the Pi Swag Shop, are still showing out of stock. That's two whole months, and counting, of restricted supply which is more than an initial hiccup. Of course you would expect enough to be made available initially to meet the expected demand. The Pi sells something in the region of 200,000 per month so what do you think the initial run of the Pi Zero actually was? The answer is 20,000 units. Of which 10,000 were stuck to the cover of MagPi and "given away" leaving just 10,000 in the usual distribution channels. And yet Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, commented: "You'd think we'd be used to it by now, but we're always amazed by the level of interest in new Raspberry Pi products," Well yes, you really would think that they might be used to it by now and perhaps even prepared for it. At the time of writing the Pi Zero is still out of stock and when it is briefly in stock customers are limited to one unit.
A victim of its own success, yes, but the real victims are the Raspberry Pi's competitors.
A victim of its own success, yes, but the real victims are the Raspberry Pi's competitors.
The ESP8266 seems to be the current competitor for "arduino with effortless network connectivity." They are about 5 dollars and actually available. Just as the pi, it has many limitations that dedicated microcontrollers solved years ago. I've been using a combination of ESP8266 and AVR lately instead of ESP8266 standalone.