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The Biggest Maker of Raspberry Pis Has Been Acquired For $871 Million (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: The biggest manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi minicomputer, Premier Farnell, has been acquired by Swiss industrial component supplier Daetwyler Holding AG for roughly $871 million. According to Bloomberg, the deal will reportedly help both companies compete better in the components market. "By combining forces, we significantly increase our competitiveness and extend our product range," Daetwyler Chairman Ulrich said in a statement, "facilitating a one-stop shopping experience for our wide range of customers from a multitude of industries." Premier Farnell is one of the only companies with a license to design and distribute Raspberry Pis. The Wall Street Journal says the Raspberry Pi devices are a big part of the company's business, as the division in charge of the Pi raked in 16 percent of the company's total revenue last year.
"By combining forces, we significantly increase our competitiveness and extend our product range," Daetwyler Chairman Ulrich said in a statement, "facilitating a one-stop shopping experience for our wide range of customers from a multitude of industries."
Marketing speak for we've just cornered the market.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Raspberry PI's are one of many neat little ARM devices. They are not the fastest but they are one of the trusted. You can also put ARM FreeBSD on them which I think is fantastic.
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/arm/armv6/ISO-IMAGES/10.3
There are also armv7 and a new armv8 project around.
"Premier Farnell is one of the only companies with a license to design and distribute Raspberry Pis."
Licensed? I thought the Pi was "open hardware" so anyone could make them. Maybe a license fee for the video render or something, but that shouldn't be restricted.
No, the Pi is manufactured by a few companies under a licensing agreement. It is not open source hardware.
Anyone can make and sell a board based on the rPi design (probably*). You can sell a crappy one made from recycled reject components, with half as much RAM and a slower CPU if you want to. What you can't do is call the crappy version a "Raspberry Pi" and label it with the raspberry logo. You can call it Blueberry Cake if you want to.
To sell a your board as a Raspberry Pi, you need permission, which is granted only to producers who meet the standards.
You're also allowed to use the trademark name "Raspberry Pi" to say your accessory is compatible with the Raspberry Pi board, and certain other defined uses. Otherwise, you need permission to use the name.
* A quick search didn't find an explicit license for the schematic or other copyrightable design documents.
Those in the electronics industry, esp EU, Australia, know Farnell (also Newark and Element 14) as a tier 1 supplier to engineers of electrical and electronic parts.
Their catalogue is thicker than your fist, and RPI's make up a couple of pages.
Thus the big story is not about RPIs, but that one of the largest electronic component suppliers has been acquired by a Swiss company.
We would place an order every other day with these guys, but the competition is fierce from Digikey, who would now be the worlds No1 general component supplier, with Mouser and Farnell running second.
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