Markets & Business
Amazon raises hardware prices as much as 60%, citing memory shortage
Amazon hiked prices on its Fire TV, Echo, Kindle, and Eero devices by as much as 60% over the weekend, pointing to rising memory and storage costs as the AI-driven "RAMmageddon" chip shortage squeezes device makers industry-wide.
Amazon significantly raised the prices of its hardware devices over the weekend, jacking some up by as much as 60%. The increases hit Fire TVs, Echos, Kindles, and Eeros; the Echo Dot, one of Amazon’s cheapest smart speakers, jumped 60% overnight, from $49.99 to $79.99. Price-tracking sites like CamelCamelCamel show the sharp uptick, which had previously hovered much lower.
Amazon told TechCrunch: “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.” The company said it would continue offering occasional promotions over the next year.
The increases reflect a broader memory shortage fueled by the AI boom — sometimes called “RAMmageddon” — that is driving up the cost of producing devices across the industry, with companies increasingly passing those costs to customers. Apple recently raised its own prices and introduced a device-leasing program to let customers pay off devices over time. The RAM shortage is expected to continue through 2027 before prices potentially crest and stabilize in 2028.
Why it matters
A 60% jump on one of Amazon’s cheapest devices shows the AI memory crunch has moved well past data centers and GPUs into everyday consumer electronics, with the higher prices likely to persist for at least another year or two before any relief.