Thought Leadership
Amazon significantly raised prices for numerous in-house hardware products overnight between August 21 and August 22, in individual cases by up to 60 percent.
The Echo Dot, Amazon’s cheapest smart speaker, was hit the hardest, with its price rising overnight from $49.99 to $79.99. Other Echo models also became more expensive, such as the Echo Show 21 from $400 to $500. Among e-book readers, the price of the 16-gigabyte Kindle rose from $109.99 to $149.99, and the Kindle Paperwhite from $159.99 to $199.99. The Fire TV lineup as well as the Eero mesh routers also became more expensive, such as the three-pack of the Eero Pro 7 from $699.99 to $799.99. According to consistent reports, the company’s Ring products were not affected by the price increases. An Amazon spokesperson stated:
“The consumer electronics industry is facing significant cost increases for memory and storage components.”
Amazon spokesperson
They stated that these additional costs had been absorbed for as long as possible before adjusting their own prices recently. The company also announced that it will continue to offer occasional discount promotions over the course of the coming year.
Amazon: Part of an industry-wide development
Amazon thus joins a growing number of technology companies raising their prices due to the ongoing memory chip shortage. Apple had already raised prices for the Mac and iPad in June, Microsoft recently announced a price increase of $100 to $150 for its Xbox consoles and completely removed the previous 2-terabyte top configuration from its lineup. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus also recently raised their prices or reduced the built-in storage capacity of their devices, while streaming provider Roku had already raised its prices four weeks earlier for the same reason.
(Editorial Team)
