Australian Govt Forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft To Explain Price Hikes

An anonymous reader writes "Live outside the U.S.? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the U.S."

Comments

Re:Valve / Steam...

[Wizarth]

Actually, Valve is mentioned in the article as one that people wanted investigated - but not as one that required a subpoena to provide information. This suggests that Valve voluntarily told them how their pricing works.

Which, as far as I know, is "We set what price the producer wants us to, or they refuse to sell on Steam at all."

Re:Translate this to legalese:

[GreenTech11]

That'd be because the majority of pharmaceuticals are covered under the Pharmaceutical Benefit System, ie, subsidised by the government as part of free and universal health care. I'm sure that if the Australian government didn't do that, we'd get an especially large "fuck you" from the pharma companies as well.

As far as media goes, I'm hopeful that something might come of this, it's one thing on physical products (where at least you can put it down to "shipping"), but when buying the exact same software, (or even the same song), costs at least 100% more, then there is no other explanation than price gouging. Particularly galling when most of these countries don't pay much Australian tax on their Australian profits either.