Raspberry Pi Becomes Third Best-Selling General Purpose Computer of All Time, Beating Commodore 64 (raspberrypi.org)

The Raspberry Pi has outsold the Commodore 64 by selling north of 12.5 million boards in five years, becoming the world's third best-selling general purpose computer. "The Commodore 64, had, until recently, the distinction of being the third most popular general purpose computing platform," Eben Upton told a crowd at the fifth birthday party. "That's what I'm here to celebrate," he said, "we are now the third most popular general purpose computing platform after the Mac and PC." The MagPi Magazine reports: The Raspberry Pi Model 3 is the best-selling Raspberry Pi. This chart shows that Raspberry Pi 3 has accounted for almost a third of all Raspberry Pi boards sold. The Model 3 sits next to its immediate predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2B+ (which has the same board shape but a slightly slower CPU). These two boards account for over half of all Raspberry Pi boards sold. The rest of the sales are between older models. The original Model A accounts for just 2 percent of sales. So keep one if you've got it as they're pretty rare. We should point out, before the Commodore fan club arrives, that there are discrepancies in the total number of sales of the C64. The 12.5 million figure comes from an analysis of serial numbers. This article by Michael Steil explains in detail why the 12.5 million number is accurate. We hold it to be the most accurate analysis of Commodore 64 sales (other opinions are available).

Comments

Is it a "General Purpose Computer"?

[mykepredko]

It seems like a bit of a stretch to call it that. There are the basic features I would consider a "General Purpose" computer to have (and, to be fair, the Raspberry Pi has many of them):
- Wall (or POE) Power Supply
- SSD/HHD (the SD Card of the Raspberry Pi could probably be considered that)
- USB Ports for Keyboard/Mouse (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Video Output (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Network Connection (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Ready to use OS (I guess Raspberry Pi could be considered to have that with Raspbian)

More philosophically, I would consider a General Purpose computer to be one that you take out of the box, plug in and turn on - the Raspberry Pi really doesn't fit that use case which makes it hard for me to consider it a "General Purpose" computer.

I would consider it to be a very successful "Custom Purpose" computer, however.

Re:Is it a "General Purpose Computer"?

[Repentinus]

A general purpose computer is simply a computer that can be used to compute any computable function when space and time constraints are ignored. Your phone is a general purpose computer. The opposite of that would be an application-specific integrated circuit or general purpose hardware locked down to running a limited set of applications.