The memory crisis has already pushed up prices across phones, laptops, consoles, and cameras, and now it is starting to reach smaller everyday gadgets. Amazon has raised prices on several Echo, Kindle, Fire TV, and Eero products, and Fortune reports that the company has blamed the increases on rising memory and storage component costs.
Some of the jumps are pretty steep. The Echo Dot, which previously cost $49.99, is now $79.99. That is a 60% increase on a device that was supposed to be one of the cheapest ways into Amazon’s smart home ecosystem.
Even the cheap stuff is getting caught up in it
Amazon’s streaming hardware is feeling the pressure too. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max has climbed from $59.99 to $84.99, while the cheaper Fire TV Stick HD is now $39.99 instead of $34.99. The 16GB Kindle has gone from $109.99 to $149.99, and the Kindle Paperwhite is up another $40 to $199.99. Home networking gear has not escaped either, with the Eero Pro 7 rising by $100 to $799.99.
Amazon confirmed the increases, saying the consumer electronics industry is facing “significant increases in memory and storage component costs.” The company says it held off on passing those costs to customers for as long as it could.
The RAM crisis is spreading well beyond PCs and phones
Most of the damage from rising memory prices has so far been easiest to spot in products where RAM and storage make up a noticeable part of the hardware cost. But smart speakers, streaming sticks, e-readers, and Wi-Fi systems still need memory and storage to function.
For months, analysts and industry executives have warned that skyrocketing memory costs would eventually spread beyond smartphones, computers, and consoles to the wider consumer electronics market. We are now seeing more of those warnings play out, with Amazon’s latest price hikes showing how far the memory crunch has started to spread.
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