The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the supply chain for several technology companies and has created a shortage of key components. With the production impacted, manufacturers are looking to raise pricing.

TSMC, the world’s leading contract manufacturer for chipsets, is expected to do the same for its new automotive chips unit, for which the company is likely to cite the global shortage of components as the reason.

As per the report, Advanced Integrated Circuits (VIS), the automotive chipset unit or subsidiary of TSMC is considering increasing pricing by up to 15 percent while other foundries are also looking to do the same.

If the companies decide to increase the pricing, it will be the second round of price increase since last fall. Reports indicate that the price rise could take effect sometime at the end of February or early March.

With the increase in pricing for key components such as chipsets, the overall price of the Smart Car could also get increased, which can slow down the pace of adoption of electric vehicles, which is now gaining momentum globally.

Meanwhile, Samsung has partnered with Telsa to work on developing a new 5nm EUV chip for autonomous driving, which is currently said to be in the Research & Development stage but we should know more about it in the coming months.

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Last month Meizu entered into the android TV Box market with its Meizu Box which has a unique triangular design that makes it stand out from the plethora of android TV boxes already in the market. The Meizu Box runs a special version of Flyme OS called Flyme for TV which is based on Android Marshmallow. When it launched, it was priced at ¥299 (~$43) but the news now is that it will get bumped up to ¥399 (~$57).

The announcement was made on Meizu’s official Weibo page where Meizu attributed the increase in price of the device to an increase in the cost of materials. The price change has already been effected on the official store.

Meizu’s TV Box has 1GB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage, a quad-core cortex-A53 processor clocked at 2GHz and a Mali 450 GPU. There is dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and it has an HDMI port, a USB port, and an Ethernet port. The Meizu Box which comes with a remote that has voice controls, supports 4K video playback and Dolby Digital.

READ MORE: Meizu reveals New Patents: Two Displays, Smaller Secondary Screen on The Back

For a new price of ¥399 (~$57), you might be better off getting the Xiaomi Mi Box which has double the RAM and runs Android TV instead of Meizu’s China-focused Flyme for TV.

The post Meizu Box Gets a Price Increase: Attributed to Rise in Cost of Materials appeared first on Gizmochina.

Recently, some information came out that the Mi 4 may be designed with a metal case which would lead to an increase in production costs. As a result, Xiaomi will increase price of the Mi 4 to 2499 RMB. 

The text in the poster for Xiaomi’s July 22 launch event says “A journey through steel.” Xiaomi’s vice-CEO, Wanqiang Li, also said in his Weibo account, that “comparing metal with plastic is like Germany playing against Brazil in the World Cup,” implying that the news about Xiaomi Mi4 using a metal design are true.

Many consumers compete with each other for Xiaomi’s smart phones because of their low prices, so this price increase may weaken this competition. Perhaps, this is just a psychological strategy Xiaomi is trying out with their prices. Whatever it is, we will just have to wait.

Here’s OPPO mart’s listing of the Mi 4.

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