https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/rpi_maker_in_residenc...

If the current models were any cheaper, that might happen again. It is one of those places where the infamous “what the market will bare” works against us: unless you are buying in bulk you have the choice between paying more or having no availability at all.

People are willing to pay more the rPi units because of the support¹ and reliability². I know I am, last time I wanted a small unit like that I went straight for an rPi without even looking at the other options that might have been cheaper.

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[1] official + community

[2] While not perfect in that regard, no supplier is, and the Pis do seem to do better than others in that regard, especially when compared to anything noticable less expensive.

I mean, yeah, that is obvious. But for early products, especially when the level of demand is greater than expectations as it was for both the early Pi and PiZero variants, it is sometimes impractical to ramp up production and supply chains fast enough. If they had made a pile more before release and demand hadn't been that high they would have gone bust with a load of stock in warehouses.

> they blame supply chain issues around covid

You've got your timeline very compressed there. The first couple of Pi Zero variants (this thread started with “The original Raspberry Pi Zero was…”) and supply issues associated with them, were around quite a bit before the effects of C19 and the associated supply chain problems. The Pi Zero 2 was released during the time when the chip shortage and related problems were biting, but the previous version was released a couple of years before 2020 and the first version a couple of years before that.