by OLIMEX Ltd in Allwinner, olinuxino Tags: Allwinner, availability, longevity

We already blogged twice about this: here and here, but you know what? People keep asking this question again and again.

Lot of serious customers are concerned about the long term availability of Allwinner SOCs before put them into their product.

Until now we didn’t know what to answer, to ask Allwinner (which is 5 years old company) if they will produce their SOC A10 for instance 10 years seems not good idea as in Chinese culture is known that they never will directly say no, and will tell you what you want to hear 🙂

Well now I know already how it works. We got message from Allwinner that A10 processor volumes now are low (for they normal volumes and this is understandable as no one is producing Tablets now with A10 when there is A20 at about same price and with more power). So Allwinner decide to stop keeping A10 on stock.

So that is! A10 processor which manufacturing started in 2011 now in 2014 is retired, normal life cycle of 3 years is what you should expect for Allwinner products.

But here is the catch!

I asked them what is the minimum quantity which Allwinner will be interested to run lot of A10 for us and keep same pricing?

And the answer came today: 50Kpcs and 90 days production time. SO even if the processor is retired and Allwinner do not want to keep it in stock you still can order their processors and they will produce for you!

This means the problem with the longevity program is over!

We can keep producing Allwinner SOC boards as long as there is enough demand for them.

A10-OLinuXino-LIME EUR 30 board will be produced forever and ever as far there is same demand like it have now! We just placed 50K order for A10 processors which will be delivered in March 2015 and we have enough stock at our site to keep the production till then.