Amazon has whacked up gadget prices by as much as 60 per cent, blaming pricey memory chips.
According to Techcrunch the online bazaar raised prices across Fire TVs, Echo speakers, Kindles and Eero networking kit over the weekend.
The Echo Dot, one of Amazon’s cheapest smart speakers, delivered the nastiest sticker shock. Its price jumped overnight from $49.99 to $79.99, which is a 60 per cent rise.
Price-tracking outfit CamelCamelCamel shows the same ugly spike after the device spent plenty of time bobbing around at much lower levels.
Amazon said: “The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs. After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines.”
Amazon said it would keep offering occasional promotions to customers during the next year, which is a neat way of saying full prices are now there to make sales look less painful. The price hikes are another reminder that buying hardware during the AI memory squeeze is becoming a mug’s game.
The global memory shortage, fuelled by the AI boom and nicknamed RAMmageddon by people who like their apocalypse with extra DIMMs, is pushing up device production costs. Rather than eating the hit, tech outfits are passing the bill to punters buying speakers, streamers and e-readers.
The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple recently raised Mac and iPad prices while sparing the iPhone for now. Job’s Mob has tried to soften the blow with a device-leasing programme in partnership with Klarna, letting users pay through the nose slowly. The RAM shortage is expected to grind on through 2027 before prices possibly peak and settle in 2028, assuming the AI crowd has not eaten every spare chip by then.
