Overview
- Amazon disclosed late Friday and Saturday that it quietly increased list prices on many first-party devices, including Echo speakers, Fire TV sticks, Kindles and eero routers.
- The hikes are largest by percentage on the cheapest models, for example the Echo Dot jumped from $49.99 to $79.99 and the Fire TV Stick 4K Max rose to $84.99.
- An Amazon spokeswoman told reporters the consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs and the company absorbed those costs until it could not.
- Some product lines were left unchanged, with Ring cameras and the high-end Echo Studio not included in the repricing, and Amazon said it will continue to run promotions despite higher base prices.
- The move tracks with industrywide price and configuration changes this year as surging demand for AI training and inference has tightened memory supply and pushed suppliers and major vendors to pass costs to buyers.