Amazon South Africa beats the US in tech price battle

Ordering tech products through Amazon’s local marketplace is generally more affordable than ordering them from the online retail giant’s US store, a MyBroadband analysis has revealed.

Amazon’s South African marketplace launched on 7 May 2024, and it is approaching one year old. Early impressions were that its catalogue was noticeably small, with somewhat underwhelming deals.

Many South Africans voiced their displeasure with the launch on social media.

“Their prices are worse than Takealot,” one user said on X.

“Only gave a quick look, but yeah, they’re not surviving if this is what their offerings are. Not the same variety of stock, and prices aren’t competitive,” another user posted.

An early MyBroadband tech price comparison also showed that it was generally cheaper to order from Amazon.com.

Many South Africans were also looking forward to the launch of Amazon’s Prime Membership — a subscription that provides extensive delivery and other benefits. However, the retailer has yet to launch the subscription.

In September 2024, Amazon South Africa managing director Robert Koen said the company was still ironing out specifics around offering the service locally.

Aside from that, the company has kept quiet about the launch of Prime in South Africa.

It will still likely be some time before Amazon Prime becomes available in South Africa, and when it does, it could be more limited than the offering in other countries.

However, local e-commerce experts have noted that Amazon’s slow local launch is nothing unusual.

According to Bash and Superbalist co-founder Claude Hanan, Amazon’s South African launch has been consistent with how it approached other new markets: methodically and with a long-term outlook.

“I wouldn’t call it a ‘disappointing’ start yet, but rather a considered one,” he said. “They seem focused on laying a foundation and understanding local dynamics before chasing growth.”

Bob Group (formerly BidorBuy) co-founder Andy Higgins said the slow launch should have been more expected.

“This aligns with Amazon’s approach in other markets, where it has also taken time to establish itself,” he said.

“Amazon never set clear expectations for their rollout strategy from their side. Much of the anticipation and subsequent disappointment came from external speculation, including from the media.”

At least on the tech side of its catalogue, Amazon’s South African pricing appears to be moving in the right direction.

Tech price showdown

MyBroadband compared pricing for 10 tech items available to buy from Amazon’s South African and US marketplaces and found that it was cheaper to order from the local marketplace across the board.

Some of the most notable price differences were for products like a Samsung SSD, a Samsung smartphone, a Xiaomi projector, and a low-budget gaming laptop.

South African residents can buy the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB NVMe SSD from Amazon.co.za for R1,799 — nearly R760 less than ordering it from Amazon.com.

The most significant proportional price difference is on the Samsung Galaxy A16 LTE 128GB, on which South African residents can save nearly 45% by ordering it from the South African marketplace.

Amazon.co.za sells the budget smartphone for R3,160, while Amazon.com’s price is R5,707.25.

At R10,699, buying the Xiaomi Mi Smart Video Projector 2 through Amazon.co.za costs roughly R3,100 less than ordering the same projector from Amazon’s US store.

South African residents can also save a sizeable chunk by ordering a low-budget gaming PC from Amazon.co.za compared to buying it from Amazon.com.

Amazon.co.za sells the Asus Tuf Gaming A15 gaming laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS CPU, Nvidia RTX 2050 4GB GPU, 512GB of SSD storage, and 8GB of DDR5 RAM for R11,999.

Buying the same-specced laptop from Amazon.com will cost R14,165.05.

The table below compares pricing for 10 items common to both the Amazon South Africa and Amazon US marketplaces.