The Raspberry Pi continues to gather good news. After the launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero W, that particular model sold 100,000 units in 96 hours, and with the growth recorded over recent weeks, it has just surpassed 12.5 million units. This led the foundation to declare the Raspberry Pi the third best-selling computer in the world, one step above the historic Commodore 64. The question is: How logical is that comparison?
The number of Commodore 64 computers sold is one of those details that will probably never be known with precision. Jack Tramiel himself said it was 22 million. Commodore's official documents indicated 17 million, confirmed by one of the company's employees. However, an article by Michael Steil, based on multiple calculations and a careful search of serial numbers on the PCB (which apparently had sixteen revisions), places the final volume at 12.5 million. Even with a margin of error of ten million units (the refurbish played an important role), the Commodore 64 is the best-selling individual computer model in history. And according to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, they have just left it behind.
What was originally planned as a project to manufacture just twenty thousand computers, today has distributed just over 12.5 million units. Eben Upton, founder and CEO, indicated that the Raspberry Pi now sits in third place, behind PCs and Macs. If we study the hard numbers of the Raspberry Pi platform, 30 percent belongs to the Raspberry Pi 3, followed closely by the Raspberry Pi 2B and the Raspberry Pi B, each with 23 percent. The Raspberry Pi Zero barely adds five percent across its two models, a testament to the poor availability of that mini computer, beyond its original price.
Now, a question for the readers: How valid is it to compare eight general versions of the Raspberry Pi with the Commodore 64? Perhaps the PCB had those sixteen revisions, and I well remember that the Commodore 64C received internal modifications, but it always used the same processor (MOS 6510), and the same amount of RAM. In contrast, the Raspberry Pi altered almost all of its main aspects, from frequency and maximum memory to ports and connectivity. Still, congratulations to the foundation, and we hope it will be 12.5 million more.
