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Apple Slashes Australian App Store Prices To Match US
An anonymous reader writes "It's been a long time coming, but Apple has finally readjusted the price of apps in Australia to match pricing in the U.S. While they remain more expensive than in the U.S., premium apps have still received a price-cut, with $8.99, $9.99 and $11.99 apps dropping to $8.49, $9.49 and $10.49, respectively. Movies and music, meanwhile, remain unchanged. In recent months, Apple has come under fire from consumer watchdogs, angry customers and even the Australian Government for its local price markups."
Even though there's alternatives a lot of Australians have "affection" for Apple and their own percieved apple lifestyle so they'll complain and keep paying up.
Remember Australian prices include the tax, in Australia that's 10%. Remove the tax and the prices are the same.
UK prices have also been adjusted, but they've gone up to 69p, £1.49 and £1.99.
"British consumers will have to pay far more than their U.S. counterparts for Apple's latest must-have gadget, the iPad. .. In an effort to explain the price difference between America and Britain, Apple pointed to the fact that there are different, and higher, taxes in Europe, as well as higher transport and other costs" .. link
Apple has announced that the starting price in the UK will be £429 for the 16GB model with a wi-fi link to the internet - around 25 per cent more than in America. The equivalent price for the same device there is around £340
Take a look at the rip-offs on offer for Australian residents (keeping in mind that AU$1 is worth about US$1.075 at the moment): http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs
but the adjustments don't follow a clear pattern from 6 to 7 NOK for cheapest apps, from 8 to 9 NOK for itunes songs, Apples own keynote, pages and numbers are up from 109 to 112(iPad) TomTom Europe is up 53% (!) to 840 NOK http://www.macstories.net/news/itunes-connect-maintenance-could-mean-apple-is-eventually-recalibrating-international-itunes-prices/ explains the previousprice differences
"Windows are for cheaters" - Bruce Springsteen
Check out the prices of Lonely Planet electronic books, Australia vs US & UK. Utterly disgusting.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
Now for steam games and all technology ($600 for the $430 asus eee transformer? I'll just import it for $40 thanks) products and we'll be set.
Well, it shocking..I appreciate the concern which is been rose. This is wrong..It is called partiality..
web designer India
So, when is Apple going to adjust their pricing in the EU? Yes, I know we have VAT tax included in the listed price, but it still does not match up given the current weak US dollar compared to the Euro. Currently, 1 Euro is about 1.42 USD. Apple conveniently prices many if not all of their goods at the same numeric value, e.g. 99 USD and 99 Euros, when comparing US and European prices.
I'll give you a personal example. I recently bought an iPad 2 for work from the Apple Store in the EU. I bought the least expensive 16GB wifi-only model, as that's all I really need. Price: 499 Euro. Same iPad in the US: 499 USD. At the current exchange rate, I paid the equivalent of *709* USD, for the same iPad I can get in the US for 499+tax. And please, don't try to give me that old story that it costs *so much* to ship it halfway around the world, that's BS. When you ship product in large quantities, the cost per device is very small, in the order of a few dollars per device, perhaps 10 in the case of an iPad. In single digit quantities the shipping would be expensive, but not in bulk.
I'll also second the comments on Steam, Valve seem to follow the same rule.
In fact, I have noticed this is a common trend for US companies selling goods abroad, something to rake in a better margin on products sold overseas, whereas most European businesses that offer the same products in the US and Europe tend to even out the pricing according to the value of the currencies.
This is just a continuation of the phenomena where global companies want to take advantage of geographical prices disparities in both directions. Jobs move to low paying areas to keep costs low, but if anyone tries to buy products from other parts of the world they scream foul play. Look at what happened to CDWOW importing CDs from Hong Kong to Europe, or Tesco importing Levi's Jeans. It's even more pronounced with online digital sales, as EU rules forbid companies from refusing to supply across borders (providing the customer is willing to stomach any relevant delivery costs or pick up the item), yet copyright agreements are often per-country. This prevents, say, someone with a UK credit card buying from the German iTunes or Steam stores or vice versa, which they may wish to do depending on the current exchange rates and differential pricing, while it is relatively common for cars to be bought over mainland EU borders (less so where there is a left-hand right-hand drive issue, although it is not unheard of for UK or Irish residents to order right-hand drive cars from mainland European dealers).
Aussies are still being screwed. The AUD is currently at $US 1.07-1.08...
Apple are not the only electronics supplier gouging Australians, take a 16Gb Asus transformer Android tablet US price US$399 Australian price US$549. Its so bad now that most Australians with any internet skills are buying their electronics in the USA and paying the shipping costs and are still saving $200 for every $1,000 spent. It gets even worse for laptops, the Australian price for Lenovo thinkpads is nearly twice the US price now.
And Adobe charges an arm and a leg for most of the apps in Creative Suite. It's not because either company is "evil" or "rotten", it's because when there's a lack of competition, a company can easily charge ridiculous amounts for their products and people will buy them. So it's the lack of competition that's rotten, not the companies themselves.
Am I the first one to point to the full list of price changes?
UK: £0.59 -> £0.69
Australia: AU$1.19 -> AU$0.99
Japan: 115 -> 85 Yen
Mexico: $10 -> $12
Switzerland: 1.10Fr -> 1.00Fr
Norway: 6.00Kr -> 7.00Kr
And also interesting (at least for some) is Apple will allow business to sell custom apps to other businesses in volume directly.
Animoog.org
Still, that's really not much more than paying lip service to Australian customers, who (presumably) by now are quite familiar with being screwed as 'second class consumers' (in a so-called third tier market). It's really, really hard to defend pricing differences in digital products in particular - especially with a strong Australian dollar - which have more or less identical costs for distribution (especially at the Enterprise hosting/bandwidth end of the scale). That said, it would be nice if this started a trend, and Aussie consumers were given a bit more respect. Of course, Australian consumers need to demand better prices to get more respect instead of paying a premium. Go without that crappy ringtone for a month!
Now if only Steam would correct it's prices for the australian market.
Check out what we have to pay compared to the states:
http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs
Yeah, but Australia is so isolated... a lot of the cost is to pay to ship the apps there. ;)
The prices in Mexico also changed, they went up by 20%
The mere fact that apple is adjusting their prices based on exchange rates is a very welcome move as far as I am concerned. Australian consumers pay crazy money at local retailers for games, dvds & such despite our dollar having been on parity with the US dollar for some time. Heck, I'm just glad to see prices that don't include an inexplicable "you are in Australia" price hike.
Could it be that doing business in Australia is more expensive than doing business in the U.S.?
Could it be that the Australian government's asinine knuckle-dragging policies with regard to content, censorship and taxation puts an increased burden on content providers?
Could it be that geography plays a role in increasing the price of infrastructure, both in obtaining equipment and in servicing a country the size of the United States but with 1/15th the population?
Could it be that licensing is more expensive in Australia due to the legal environment and actions of Australian IP-holding companies and individuals?
Could it be that Australian currency values and exchange rates vary over time?
Nah. Just mindlessly jump on the Apple-hater bandwagon and demand that the rest of the world subsidize Australia. It's easier, and it's what the mob is doing.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The Commonwealth has no real ability to project power. If Australia were invaded, no other Commonwealth nation has the firepower, the assets, the logistics train, or the economic ability to undertake such a huge and difficult mission. Even the United States, with its unquestioned dominance of the seas and the best logistics operations in the world, takes months to years to build up or withdraw military forces on that scale, and as current budgetary crises show, difficulty sustaining the expense. Aircraft carriers and amphibious battle groups are the only means of quickly moving in enough firepower to deter and defeat a major invasion, and aircraft carriers require a supply chain that needs protection the whole way.
Have a look at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service ... it pretty much tells the tale. If you add up the tonnage of every other operational aircraft carrier in the world (which maps well to the number of aircraft they sustain), that's still less than 25% of the US capability. And that doesn't even take into account operational expertise
Commonwealth military power consists of domestic defense (land-based air forces, conventional armies) and small expeditionary forces (special forces and sufficient logistics to supply those small special forces groups). Even Great Britain, by a huge margin the most powerful of the Commonwealth nations, has a limited ability to forward-deploy air power and ground troops, and exactly one aircraft carrier; no other Commonwealth nation has even one. Consider the Falklands war. Great Britain had a whole lot more trouble than many people seem to believe, and that was against a country with essentially a third-world army, an air force of a dozen aircraft, and a handful of French-built Exocet missiles. Great Britain's navy is in worse condition now than it was then, and Australia's heavyweight neighbors are much more militarily powerful than Argentina's.
Or to restate, just how would the Commonwealth be able to get its armies and the (literally) millions of tons of equipment and supplies needed to Australia? Quantas? UPS?
There are excellent reasons why Australia has such a hunger for FA-18s and is waiting so eagerly for F-35s. Those aircraft are all that would stand between Darwin and Jakarta if things went badly.
That, and the US navy.
The US, if it really needed to, could have half a thousand first-rate combat aircraft, ten thousand combat-ready Marines, a full armored division, and a couple hundred aircraft-deployed nuclear weapons anywhere in the world within two weeks. This, more than anything else, is the core of US military strength; not the missiles, not the AIr Force (which must operate from land bases) and not the regular land Army. The US is a naval power; indeed, it is the only naval power with a global capability.
All nationalism aside, those are the facts. Waving Australian flags and burning American flags doesn't change that. 50 years from now, who knows what things will be like, but today, that's stark reality.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
to match US prices
Summary
they remain more expensive than in the U.S
More expensive != match.
With the the AU dollar worth more than the US for well over 6 months now, the AU prices should be CHEAPER than the US, not more expensive.