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Raspberry Pi, the credit card-sized computer, has sold 10 million units in the past four-and-a-half years, extending its lead as the best-selling British computer ever.

The pint-sized computer beat Alan Sugar’s Amstrad PCW as the best-selling British computer back in February after selling 8m units and since then it has sold a further 2m units, making it a round 10 million.


Raspberry Pi creator and CEO Eben Upton told WIRED that right from the beginning the Pi answered the demand from hobbyists for cheap, easily modifiable computers. "It was a thing that people already wanted, particularly in the maker community, there was a latent demand for something like that," he said.

The Raspberry Pi 1 sold 100,000 units on its launch in 2012 and since then millions of Pis have found their way into schools, industry and even into space. Tim Peake, the UK's first astronaut aboard the International Space Station used a Raspberry Pi to run code written in the classroom by UK students.

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"The Tim Peake thing was very evocative to me because I grew up in the 1980s and my Dad got me out of bed for the first Space Shuttle launch – I remember watching at 4 o'clock in the morning," Upton said.

"It was really lovely to see that kids 30, 40 years later are still excited about space and computers and we weren't imagining that this was what kids wanted – it's something they really wanted and were given."


In February, Pi released the Raspberry Pi 3, its first board with in-built Wi-Fi. Unlike the Pi 2, which was only the company’s lead product for 13 months, Upton expects the Pi 3 will stay the company’s flagship computer for the next three or four years, while the Pi Zero, which costs just £4, will remain the cheapest Pi on offer.

While there’s no new Pi on the horizon, Upton told WIRED the company will be releasing a software update before the end of the month.

"If you bought a Raspberry Pi 1 in 2012 then you'll get a better experience, just as it'll make the experience better for someone who's got a Pi 3," he said.