Raspberry Pi has charmed its way to a UK computer revival
Raspberry Pi is a quirky enterprise. Started by a foundation to make cheap microcomputers for schools, it expanded into industrial technology before listing in London in June. When it announced its first public financial results last week, its shares rose 9 per cent, giving it a market value of about £720mn.
The company is based in Cambridge, the city where the pioneering Acorn Computers was founded in 1978. Acorn spun off its chip design division to form Arm before failing in the 1990s. Raspberry Pi was conceived in the university’s computer science department, but has transcended its origins.
Its single-board devices, mostly assembled in the UK by Sony at a factory in Wales, are remarkably cheap: its latest Raspberry Pi 5 basic model costs under £50 and a microprocessor with its own design of chip is about £5. Having started in schools and home projects, they are popping up in many machines, from electric vehicle chargers to flight information screens.
Raspberry Pi has always been charming: it now has a global following of enthusiasts, including 3.2mn subscribers to its Reddit forum, compared with Nvidia’s 1.9mn. Its grassroots approach appeals to a traditional tech culture of hackers and makers, rather than companies such as Apple and Microsoft. As it joins the mainstream, it will be harder to maintain this spirit.
