I think most people are aware of costs to develop, manufacture, promote and sell a product. But at the end of the day profit is profit so I am not sure what point you are trying to make.Chip R&D is expensive, you have to pay for it somehow. Just the tools cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, before you even start designing, and then you get to making masks, which is eye-wateringly expensive. You must take into account amortisation of development costs. I cannot remember the exact amount Eben stated on the call, but the RP1 cost many millions to develop, which needs to be paid for.From today's timely released 2024 FY report - "SBC and compute module gross profit per board declined to $7.4 due to the higher costs of the Raspberry Pi 5".
The margins aren't that low though. If they were Raspberry Pi's annual profits wouldn't be as high as they are.
I am not sure what the price of a Pi SBC is considered to be but, if we take that to be a Pi 5 4GB; $7.4 of $55 is around 13.5%.
That's not what I would call "very low profit margin". I have generally agreed with those who say 20% is good, 10% is average, 5% is low, with 2% being very low.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Wed Apr 02, 2025 3:54 pm