Things aren’t getting better – they are getting worse. The current semiconductor shortages are affecting RAM, SSD and CPU prices and companies are pulling the emergency brake.
Ayaneo just announced that the Konkr Pocket FIT 8Elite is now shipping, after a delay of several months. Unfortunately, the Indiegogo post announcing this ends on a somber note:
Please also note that due to the recent increase in storage component prices, future production costs will rise significantly. As a result, after this upcoming restock, Pocket FIT 8Elite will very likely be the final production batch, and it will be available while supplies last, with no current plans for further restocking.
In case you haven’t been following along with the product’s launch, the Konkr Pocket FIT is an Android-powered handheld game console with a 6” 1080p 144Hz LCD, an 8,000mAh battery and a choice between the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It’s this latter version that is getting discontinued. Presumably, there is less demand for the gaming-oriented G3 chip, which should allow that version to remain available.
Ayaneo Konkr Pocket FIT 8Elite
But the whole market is hurting right now, not just the ARM side of things. The Windows-based Ayaneo NEXT 2 is affected too and sales have been suspended. The NEXT 2 is a beast of a machine with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo), 32/64/128GB of RAM, 1/2TB SSD, 9.06” OLED display (165Hz, 2,400 x 1,504px) and a 116Wh battery. It had a suitably beastly price too, $2,000. However, even that was unsustainable.
Ayaneo NEXT 2
Here’s what Ayaneo said in an Indiegogo post. This will give you a sense of how bad things are at the moment:
However, after the Chinese New Year, when we communicated with our suppliers again to confirm the latest storage procurement prices, we found that storage prices had increased to several times higher than before the holiday. Under such circumstances, the overall cost of the product has become far higher than our current selling price. Therefore, after careful consideration, we have decided to suspend the pre-orders of NEXT 2.
At present, the total cost of the product has far exceeded our selling price, even approaching twice the price we originally set. Under such circumstances, continuing to sell this product is no longer sustainable.
Ayaneo isn’t the only company facing issues – Valve’s Steam Deck is running low on stock, while the Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR launches were pushed back to an indeterminate future date. Recently, Intel announced that it is increasing its CPU prices by up to 10% – and soon after AMD announced that it will do the same with increases up to 15%.
