Tech prices, supply and demand settling down? Pi anyone?

[DHR]

Having seen the recent announcement by the Raspberry Pi foundation, they've got Sony production support to increase output. I felt a slight pang of relief as supply has been a bit stupid since the pandemic kicked in.

The PS5 has started to see discounts too but we're already a fair way through the lifecycle of that platform and I starting contemplating whether businesses have gotten a leg up from it all if they've had the resources to do so.

I've wanted to replace a couple of pi's for the last 2-3 years, prices and availability has been a joke. I ended up going down the route of picking up a couple of Orange Pi units and they're fast, and cheap. There are so many versions of them too, the latest the Zero3 doesn't even have full armbian support yet because they're shipping them out that quick.

I'm not the only one, so the chunk out of the raspberry foundation must be huge during the last 3 years or so.

Is it raspberry didn't work to innovate as much as orange did, or has it been a case of localised supply chain priorities meaning orange have had better access to materials?

Are we finally seeing things settle?

 

[Mercurial]

Regarding things settling; there seem to be more Pi "drops" recently. One of the biggest maker sites has all bar one of the Pi 4 B variants in stock at RRP. Amazon as usual is still scalper central in the main.

 

[Hades]

I checked out of buying new computer tech some time ago. Availability and increasing prices got boring so I tend to buy used stuff and only ever buy if it's for a specific need, rather than a want.

Essentially the massive price increases pushed me out of the market and even if they come back down again it changed my buying habits.

Basically I'm out of the market now. I don't know if I'm a typical buyer but if I am then it won't bode well for the industry long term.

 

[DHR]

Think you may have hit the nail on the head for many there @Hades

I think because manufacturers couldn't be, or weren't resourceful, punters ended up being instead.

I lost count of how many "Turn this old workstation into a gaming PC" themed articles I saw, and continue to see now, that's a good thing from an e-waste perspective mind.

 

[Semple]

Supply chains are still very much constrained. Working in the tech industry, I'm still seeing long lead times for customers purchasing our hardware and for it to be delivered. Even internal orders for stuff that we make (which you'd expect to be able to be turned around in days/a week at most) is still taking many months to build and ship.

The good news seems to be that pricing has started to come down though. I had a few specs for servers sat waiting for approval and eventually when I was allocated budget to buy, pretty much every component had dropped in price - memory and CPU had the biggest drops.