Amazon hikes hardware prices by 60%, blaming memory shortage
- ID
- 17354
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 25 Aug 2026, 3:54 AM
- Fetched
- 25 Aug 2026, 5:11 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/24/amazon-hikes-hardware-prices-by-60-percent-blaming-memory-shortage/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 25 Aug 2026, 5:13 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_founders
What happened
Amazon raised prices on consumer hardware (Fire TVs, Echos, Kindles, Eeros) by up to 60% overnight, citing rising memory and storage component costs driven by the AI boom. The Echo Dot jumped from $49.99 to $79.99. Amazon says the shortage is industry-wide and will continue through 2027, with possible stabilization in 2028.
Why it matters
The 'RAMmageddon' memory shortage is not just a consumer gadget story — it signals that RAM and storage costs will keep climbing into 2027, which means cloud instance pricing, on-prem hardware budgets, and device procurement for teams will likely get worse before they get better. If you're planning infrastructure spend or hardware refresh cycles, lock in current pricing or expect 30-60% increases on memory-heavy gear.
Discussion angle
How long the memory shortage persists and whether cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) will pass component cost increases to compute instance pricing — and what that means for SaaS unit economics if it does.