Raspberry Pi Sells 10 Million Computers, Celebrates With New Starter Kit

Raspberry Pi has come a long way (in a very short package) in the past four year. The credit card-sized computer has taken the fancy of millions around the world. 10 million to be more precise. Yes, the Raspberry Pi has now sold 10 million units since its launch in 2012. The tiny computer beat Alan Sugar's Amstrad PCW in February with 8 million units, making it the best-selling British computer ever.

The Raspberry Pi is widely used as an educational tool for programming. In fact, Tim Peake, the UK's first astronaut aboard the International Space Station, used a Raspberry Pi to run a code that was developed in a classroom by UK students. Raspberry Pi computers, however, can also be used for other purposes like stream music to several devices in a house.

To celebrate the computer's 10 million mark, the company has launched the Raspberry Pi Starter Kit, which includes a Raspberry Pi 3 that was launched in February, an 8GB SD card with a preloaded NOOBs operating system, an official case, power supply, HDMI cable, mouse, keyboard and a guidebook. The Starter Kit is priced at GBP 99 (roughly Rs. 8,770) and will be available in the coming weeks.

(Also see: Three Great Projects Using a Raspberry Pi 3 for the Summer)

"At the time, we thought our lifetime volumes might amount to ten thousand units - if we were lucky. There was was no expectation that adults would use Raspberry Pi, no expectation of commercial success, and certainly no expectation that four years later we would be manufacturing tens of thousands of units a day in the UK, and exporting Raspberry Pi all over the world," Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton said in a blog post.

The Raspberry Pi 3 was launched in February and came with a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor which the company says has 10x performance of the Raspberry Pi 1. The Pi 3 was also the first board with a built-in WiFi. As of now, the company has no plans for a new Pi and expects the Pi 3 to be the flagship for the next two to three years.

As of now, the Starter Kit will only be available in the UK but the company says sales will expand to the rest of the world in the coming weeks.