The memory shortage crisis continues to be a thing, affecting prices of devices that make use of it. Smartphones are naturally among those that will be hit pretty hard, and we’re expecting to see the effects with more upcoming launches. Those on the lower end are not exactly free either, and now Samsung, a producer of such memory modules, has announced price increases for its entry-level smartphones. More specifically, the LTE and 5G models of the Galaxy A07 and A17 with the 8GB + 256GB configuration are seeing a price hike of between RM120 and RM200.
Samsung Malaysia announced these price changes, which are effective starting today. As mentioned, only one memory and storage configuration is affected across the models. With that in mind, the Galaxy A07 5G sporting this specific configuration will see its price go from RM1,029 to RM1,149. The LTE model will go from RM899 to RM1,049. Then there’s the Galaxy A17, which will go from RM1,149 to RM1,299 for the 5G model, and RM949 to RM1,149 for the LTE model. Other configurations, if any, remain unaffected for now.
As you’d expect, Samsung pins the blame, as it were, to “growing demand from AI infrastructure and data centre expansion”. The South Korean tech giant goes on to say that “despite ongoing efforts to absorb these rising costs and minimise the impact on consumers, the current market environment has made a price revision necessary”.
It’s a tad ironic, because the company has a division that makes smartphones, and another that makes memory and storage. There have been reports that the latter has refused to sell to the former, but the company has since denied them as rumours. That being said, one of the suppliers of the aforementioned data centre expansion has been Samsung itself, specific division notwithstanding.
