Hardware Prices Surge Up to 60% as Amazon Feels Memory Shortage Squeeze

Amazon has raised prices across multiple product lines, including Fire TV and Echo, with the Echo Dot smart speaker jumping from $49.99 to $79.99, a 60% increase. Nvidia also plans to raise AI server prices by more than 15%. As AI infrastructure expansion continues to absorb memory capacity, the supply-demand crunch may persist until 2027, with prices expected to stabilize around 2028.

The global memory shortage continues to drive up hardware costs, and the tech industry is facing a new wave of price increases.

According to a TechCrunch report on Aug. 24, Amazon recently raised prices across multiple product lines, including Fire TV, Echo, Kindle, and Eero, with some products seeing increases of up to 60%. The Echo Dot smart speaker's price rose from $49.99 to $79.99, a single increase of $30.

Amazon stated: "The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs. After absorbing these cost increases for as long as possible, we have recently adjusted pricing across our product lines." This round of price hikes is not a proactive move by Amazon but a passive response to soaring memory costs. AI infrastructure construction continues to expand, absorbing a large amount of memory capacity for servers and AI systems, with demand growing significantly faster than supply expansion, driving up prices for memory products such as DRAM.

From Apple to Amazon, Memory Shortage Becomes Main Driver of Price Hikes

Recently, according to supply chain sources, Apple plans to complete global price adjustments for the iPhone 17 series by the end of August, with the highest increase per unit approaching nearly 1,000 yuan (Japan has already adjusted first). The core reason is the huge cost pressure from storage chip shortages and price surges. Previously, the Chinese mainland versions of Mac and iPad had already seen price increases, and the industry expects that due to supply chain constraints, Apple product prices may continue to rise.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's AI server business is also facing price increase pressure. According to Bloomberg, Nvidia plans to raise the price of servers equipped with its AI chips by more than 15%, with the adjustments taking effect for systems shipped starting early next year. Contract server manufacturers supplying large data center operators such as Microsoft, Google, and Oracle have begun notifying customers of the price increases.

Memory is both a core component of Nvidia's GPUs and server systems and a basic material for consumer electronics devices. With the explosion of AI infrastructure investment, memory demand continues to outpace supply expansion, and even as major DRAM manufacturers gradually expand capacity, the market supply-demand gap remains difficult to close quickly.

The shortage is expected to continue. Industry insiders believe that the global memory supply-demand tension may persist until 2027, and prices may only peak and stabilize around 2028. This means that the cost pressure faced by hardware manufacturers is unlikely to ease in the short term.

Faced with rising raw material costs, tech companies are gradually passing the pressure downstream. Amazon said it will continue to partially mitigate the impact of price increases through periodic promotions over the next year; Apple has also previously raised product prices and launched a device leasing program to reduce consumers' one-time expenses.

From consumer electronics to AI servers, this round of price increases is becoming another cost of AI industry expansion. For hardware companies, high memory prices will continue to squeeze profit margins, and whether end consumers can bear higher prices will also become an important variable affecting sales and revenue growth.