A banner has appeared within the storefront of the Withings website announcing that several products within its lineup will see price increases over the coming weeks. If you click through, you’ll find the entire Withings catalog with tags applied to identify which products will be affected by the changes. In the US, it notes that only Body Cardio, Sleep Analyzer, BPM Connect, and 38mm ScanWatch products will see increases between $20 and $30.
The dates appear to be staggered slightly by region — for example, the Netherlands will see price changes on September 19th, while prices in the US won’t switch until October 1st.
Withings states that “since 2020 some of our components, such as the microcontroller in Body Cardio, have increased by 20% and the transportation costs by more than 200% since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis.”
The company has decided to alter its prices to reflect the ongoing semiconductor shortage, which is expected to continue throughout 2023. Withings also claims it isn’t willing to “compromise on quality or innovation,” writing off the option of sourcing cheaper materials.
Withings certainly isn’t the only brand feeling the effects of the chip shortage. As technology adapts, the demand for chips has increased while supply has insufficient capacity to keep up, causing delays and shortages in everything from household appliances to vehicle production lines.
The reasons for the chip shortage include canceled orders at the start of the pandemic, limited production for in-demand but out-of-date modules, and demand that seems to only increase, as Harvard professor Willy Shih explained to us last year on the Decoder podcast.
Rising inflation has also been attributed to increases in the price of numerous tech products this year. While some companies, such as Apple, can afford to absorb some of these costs (note that pricing for the iPhone 14 Pro and Apple Watch Series 8 has not increased from their previous generations), others choose not to, like Meta increasing the price of its Quest VR headset and Sony’s everywhere-except-the-US PS5 price hike.