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Australians Set To Pay 50% More For Apps After Apple Price Spike (heraldsun.com.au)
SlappingOysters writes: Within 36-hours the price of Apple apps is set to increase in Australia, Sweden and Indonesia. It will bring the price of buying an app out of alignment with the value of the Australian dollar, and leave the country's Apple fans paying 50% more for their iOS software than their American counterparts. It's unfortunate timing, with the recent launch of the iPhone 6s and the upcoming fourth generation of Apple TV.
Don't forget the cost of translating into Australian.
This is another reason why it's good to be in the EU. Digital goods must be priced the same everywhere, and soon artificial regional restrictions will be removed so someone in the UK can buy apps on a Polish app store if they want to, and the developer must allow it. Should force the price of video games down a fair bit, for a start, and break the monopoly satellite TV channels have on certain sporting events.
Maybe Australia should just ban regional locks and require that digital goods be priced within say 5% of the US/EU price. Or maybe apply to join the EU.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's actually possible to self host a corporate app store. The apps expire once per year, but it's a lot less restrictive. I've worked on a self-updating iOS app for a client that they self host for their internal workers. Even though the app self updates, they still have to uninstall version-N and install version-N+1 each new calendar year.
Maybe Australia should just ban regional locks and require that digital goods be priced within say 5% of the US/EU price. Or maybe apply to join the EU.
Yeah, but the price of joining the EU has just gone up . . . you need to take in a million Syrians to join the EU. But, hey, Australia has plenty of room in the outback. And, although Australia is infested with lots of poisonous toxic critters and varmints, it can't be worse than in Syria.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Australia would probably benefit from an influx of skilled people. It's got the space, and it does try to attract the "right" kind of immigrants with skills it wants. The problem is that Syrians are mostly Muslims, and there is a perceived culture clash. Actually Syrians are quite progressive, relatively speaking, which is why they are fleeing the hard core old-school guys from ISIS.
It's a hard sell to people who have Pavolvian conditioning to instantly feel fear and panic when they hear words like "Islam".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It is simply the us price converted to aud, plus GST. The Aussie dollar has dropped from parity to 0.75/USD.
The title of the parent post is totally misleading and shows a clear sign of not having passed basic algebra. Australians are going to pay 15% more for their apps and not 50%.
First $1 AU = 0.70 US. Taking currency conversion into consideration, this means that a 0.99 App in the US store would cost $1.29 AU.
Next, we see that that $1.29 apps are being raised to $1.49. That's a $0.20 AU or a 15% price hike.
Converting that back to US, we see that the equivalent cost is $1.09 US vs the original $0.99 US. This $0.10 US difference equates to an actual 10% markup between the AU and the US markets.
I would have to assume that Apple is passing on their operational overhead costs in the pricing of apps.
Something to think about - developers are permitted to set the price of their apps. In the US, other than free, the minimum cost is $0.99 as that is the lowest tier that Apple permits. Should developers be forced to take a pay cut because they are selling in a market with a poor currency exchange rate or should they be permitted to sell their wares at a specific price they deem appropriate?
Given that Apple is going to reintroduce a $0.99 tier in those markets, should developers be expected to sell their apps at a 30% discount in the US as well? After the Apple tax of 30% on goods sold in the store, the developer makes a $0.50 on an item they originally sold for $0.99. Is that fair?
If developers are willing to take such a hit on their profits at the benefit of maybe selling more at the lower price and gaining a PR boost, then we will see them moving to the $0.99 plan in those poorer performing markets.
A little known secret about electrons is that they are rarely shipped from A to B.
That's because they're really hard to get through customs. I recently ordered a shipment of electrons in convenient 18x65mm cylindrical form from the Golden Phoenix 10,000 Years Happy Luck battery factory (you know that's got to be a good brand) and it was blocked from being shipped by air, some nonsense about "vent with flame" which I'm sure is just anti-Chinese protectionism.
Unlike in the US where taxes are separate, GST (10%) is included in the app store price.
$0.99 US pre-tax + 10% GST = $1.089 US post-tax
currently $1 US = 1.3713 AUD
so $1.089 US = 1.4933457 AUD
So Aussies are in fact getting a $0.0033457 AUD discount over the US.
Australia would probably benefit from an influx of skilled people. It's got the space,
Australia may have space, but the immigrants all flock to Sydney, which most certainly does _not_ have space. Its now impossible to buy a decent family home within cooee of the city for under a million dollars. Other major cities are not much better. None of the immigrants want to go to Woopwoop, Tasmania.
Why don't they flee to other Muslim countries?
Because many of those countries have the same regimes that they are fleeing from.
[Rent This Space]
immigrants != refugees. Refugees are less than 10% of net immigrants, and tend to settle where they are told, as they are usually dependent on public housing. The issue of course is population growth in the crowded cities, which is being driven by immigration, not births. Partly internal migration, but mostly external. This is no criticism of the individual migrants, but of government policy driven by the wealthy at the expense of the poor.