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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."
I already know the answer. It's the same reason Canadians pay far more for the same items in the US even though our dollar has been at parity for years now.
There was one scandal where Bombardier, a Canadian company receiving government money, was charging Canadians more for ATVs made in Canada than they charged in the US. So effectively the Canadian government was subsidizing a company to rip-off it's own citizens.
"Why? Because fuck you. That's why."
And yet if I was to go overseas and buy as many copies of Photoshop as I can fit in my bag, jet back to Oz and resell them it is illegal.
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You seem to be under the misguided belief that costs determine prices. In the real world, that's only rarely true,
Microsoft, Adobe, etc are not charities like the Raspberry Pi foundation; they adjust their prices in order to maximize their profits.
In an ideal scenario, competition would lower the prices. There are many reasons why this doesn't happen in this market, but you can thank government-granted monopolies like patents for a big chunk of that - it's kinda hard to compete when you can't even implement FAT on your OS without paying Microsoft.
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