TL;DR
Roku raised prices for streaming devices in the US by up to 60 percent, blaming a global memory shortage driven by demand from AI data centers.
Roku has increased prices on its entire line of streaming hardware in the US. with increases ranging from $10 to $50 per device, as a global memory shortage driven by demand from AI data centers hits a product category that had been one of the last bastions of affordable consumer technology. The Streaming Stick 4K saw the steepest jump, rising 60 percent from $50 to $80. The Roku Ultra and Streambar SE rose from $100 to $150, while the basic Streaming Stick went from $30 to $40 and the Streaming Stick Plus from $40 to $60.
Roku has not issued a public statement about the increases, but a company executive told The Desk that the changes were driven by shortages of memory and other components caused by the rise of AI. The products are still available at their previous prices on Roku’s US website under the title “sale“, although there is no indication of how long that price will last. The company’s UK international prices and other regional websites have not changed yet, but increases appear likely.
The increases are notable because streaming devices are at the cheap end of consumer electronics, where changes in component costs are harder to absorb. Apple killed off its $599 Mac Mini earlier this year after DRAM costs made the price unsustainable, with Samsung, Google and Qualcomm raising prices or warning of increases in recent weeks. A Roku Streaming Stick 4K uses far less memory than a phone or laptop, but even a small amount of DRAM now costs multiples of what it did a year ago, and for a $50 product that operates on razor-thin margins, doubling component costs is existential.
Roku controls about 28 percent of the U.S. connected TV platform market, according to Parks Associates, and its devices are used by more than 100 million households worldwide. The same memory remapping that is killing cheap smartphones is now squeezing streaming hardware, a category where the entire value proposition has historically depended on keeping the entry price below $50. Fox agreed to acquire Roku for $22 billion in June and the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval.
For consumers who have been putting off purchasing a streaming device, the industry’s message is consistent: buy now or pay more later. The memory shortage is expected to last until 2027, as chipmakers continue to prioritize high-bandwidth memory for AI servers over commodity DRAM used for everything else.
