Here’s an interesting article over on The MagPi website. According to the article, Raspberry Pi has now sold more than 12.5 million units across the range. This surpasses the 12.5 million sales of the Commodore 64. Compared to the C64’s 11-year life span (shown in the graph below), the Pi has achieved this in just 5 years and shows no signs of slowing down.
How you measure sales is, of course, open to interpretation. The C64 12.5 million figure is based on an analysis of serial numbers, and there is some debate as to whether the true figure is more or less. I suspect that the Raspberry Pi sales figures are slightly more accurate. Someone on the MagPi article has commented that, really, one ought to include all the other (compatible) models of the Commodore such as the 16, 64 and 128, and they’re probably right – the MagPi’s assertion uses the entire range, so why not count the entire competing range? My feeling is that the 16 and 128 make up just a small proportion of sales compared to the C64. However, my statisticians brain screams out for accuracy, which I guess I will never get! 😉
The 16 (and it’s sister the Plus 4) wasn’t compatible with the 64. The 128 was, though. I had a summer job putting turbo loaders onto 64 master tapes for the tape duplication company that handled Activision, US Gold and a few other big names.