News & Reviews:   price hike

Back in February, Samsung told The Verge that global shortages of RAM and other materials, combined with tariffs, made a "significant contribution" to the price hike. But the company may be preparing another wave of price increases for its Galaxy flagship smartphones, according to a new report suggesting rising component costs and AI-related hardware demands are continuing to pressure the mobile industry.

2026 already seems like all doom and gloom for the tech industry. Xiaomi's President and HONOR have already warned us about this due to the rising cost of memory chips. Today, Nothing co-founder Carl Pei took to X to warn that future smartphones may become more expensive, signalling a shift in industry dynamics that could reshape how devices are priced in the coming years.

News of RAM shortages has been around for months, with many companies warning consumers to expect rising prices. This is bad news for many companies, as it means fewer people would be willing to buy new products. The good news is that ASUS has plans to help.

HONOR has confirmed that it will increase prices across its tablet lineup in response to surging memory and storage chip costs, marking a shift in pricing strategy for one of the world’s more prominent consumer electronics brands. The announcement follows a similar move by Xiaomi, which earlier this month raised prices on several tablet models amid the same industry-wide pricing pressures.

Netflix now has nearly 302 million subscribers, an increase of 18.9 million new subscribers in the last quarter. This increase exceeded previous analyst forecasts and solidified Netflix's position as the world's number-one paid streaming platform. The platform also announced a price hike for its subscription. So, what should you know about it?

Exactly a year ago, Apple raised the prices of its TV+, Music and One subscriptions by up to RM10 per month. Once again, the company is doing it again but this time only on Apple One and Apple Arcade. 

Once again, Netflix is announcing another price increase for the Basic and Premium plans. However, it's only starting out in the US, the UK and France for now, according to its third-quarter financial report of 2023 here. 

Last week, news was already buzzing around of Spotify raising the price for each plan. But we have realized that the price hike for the Malaysian market has already taken effect for new subscribers.

If you saw the news recently, Sony has raised the prices of the PS5 globally, but not in the U.S. However, it also has made a minor change to the consoles, as new reports claim that the Disc and Digital editions of the PS5 are now lighter than ever.

Over the past two years, the pandemic has affected the workforce and raised prices consequentially. One great example was the hiked price of GPU cards. We have also seen 2022 laptop model prices being a bit overpriced more than they used to and may even rise higher in the second half of 2022.