Over the weekend, Amazon significantly increased the prices of its hardware devices, raising them by as much as 60% in some cases. The price explosion affected Fire TVs, Echos, Kindles and Eeros. One egregious example that has been cited is the Echo Dot, one of Amazon’s cheapest smart speakers, whose price jumped 60% overnight, from $49.99 to $79.99. Price tracking sites like CamelCamelCamel show a sharp rebound, which had previously remained much lower. When contacted by TechCrunch for comment, Amazon shared the following: “The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in the costs of memory and storage components. After absorbing these increases for as long as possible, we recently adjusted pricing across all of our product lines.” The company also said it would continue to offer occasional promotions to customers over the next year. Amazon’s price increases reinforce the reality that it’s a terrible time to buy hardware. The global memory shortage fueled by the rise of AI (aka “RAMmageddon”) is driving up the cost of producing devices of all kinds. As a result, companies increasingly pass on costs to their customers. In a sign of the times, Apple recently raised its prices and has tried to offset the new high fees by introducing a device leasing program, allowing users to pay for their devices over time. The RAM shortage is expected to continue through 2027 before prices peak and stabilize in 2028.
