Eben has said[1] that he expects supply to improve considerably in the new year, starting with the Zero.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/yswb2d/raspbe...
Previously we could order a box o' 150 with lead time of about a month without problems.
The crunch is real.
I googled it and this was the first result haha.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/10-reaso...
You see /r/RaspberryPi posts all the time when people find them in the wild (ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/zasupv/pi_spo...)
> I've yet to see a Pi 'IRL'
This is such an interesting contrast to where I live in the United States. Until some time in 2021 I could go to Microcenter and expect to find what I wanted on the shelf most of the time. Mail order availability has sort of fluctuated over the past decade, but usually the stuff was available without too much difficulty. I don't think I've ever had to buy one at a marked up price, and certainly not as part of a bundle.
Oddly, Adafruit used to markup their Pis something like five or ten bucks when purchased in small quantities, buy they don't do that anymore. If you're willing to leave https://rpilocator.com running on your PC on Wednesday (it used to be that Wednesday was the day of the week Adafruit sold that week's allotment of Pis, I'm not sure that's still the case but this worked for me in August) you can probably get a Pi 4 from them. This kooky approach worked better for me than Adafruit's email notification of availability. By the time I received their email one Wednesday in June, they were sold out.
Of course rpilocator might locate something closer to home. Adafruit's 2FA keeps the product from being sold out instantly, which is nice.
I saw a discussion (I think on Mastodon). Apparently they believe the supply issues should return to a much closer level of normality in the next couple of months. As they ramp up again they have been prioritising supply for companies who need the hardware to stay alive (i.e. not making layoffs) over retail sales.
Personally, I think that sounds like they're doing the right thing since most "normal" people don't urgently need a Pi.
I didn't have much of a need for Pi 4s in the past, but that has changed. I could use 3 or 4 more Pi 4s. Thankfully, I have plenty of Pi Zero W's. In the past, Adafruit put a limit of one Pi zero (per configuration) per order. Every time I ordered something, I added a Pi zero W & a Pi zero W with an installed header.
Right now I've got almost a dozen Pi zeros for the projects I'm working on. But I do agree with you, they could have sold as many as they made.
It's a bit frustrating, but it is what it is, I suppose.
I've been using PI4s and had no problem obtaining them so I would disagree. But yes everything was fine until it was not. I had to cancel a product because "unobtanium" and price going through the roof.