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Microsoft Raises UK Cloud, Software Prices 22% After Brexit-Fuelled Pound Drop (techweekeurope.co.uk)
Reader Mickeycaskill writes: Microsoft is to substantially increase its prices for software and cloud services prices offered in British pounds in order to accommodate the sharp drop in the currency against the US dollar in recent weeks. Beginning in January 2017 on-premises enterprise software prices will go up by 13 percent and most enterprise cloud prices will increase by 22 percent, bringing them into line with euro prices. Microsoft said it isn't planning to change its prices for consumer software and cloud services. The value of the pound has fallen by about 18 percent since the EU referendum on 23 June.
You stupid USians don't know what's going to hit you when Microsoft finds out that you illegally broke away from the EU 240 years ago!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
All they're doing is following the exchange rate for the British pound.
Every time a brexiter in denial with "oh they're just using brexit as an excuse".
No, you dumb bastard - if the GBP is worth 20% less then business either have to absorb a ~20% loss or increase prices. There's no conspiracy here. There's no clever accounting being hidden you by MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIES to make it look like the GBP has not seriously lost value when actually it hasn't. The fact is that the currency is no so useful atm. Just as investment in the UK in general is now not so attractive, not least because of a huge amount of uncertainty that investors hate - all that's really worth doing is buying chunks of UK business on the cheap, like our loss of our best technology asset, ARM.
It might be worth doing in the consumer sector because 1) they're facing serious competition atm 2) it's a smaller market anyway. But other business can't do this. They either run on much smaller margins, or they don't have huge reserves to release the pain more slowly. Sure, Carney has been making excellent use of public money to buffer things for now - his was the "emergency budget" that took place entirely within the executive sphere - but eventually he is going to run out of other people's money, to quote the old bat, and QE would just devalue the pound further.
I run a small business, but I'm already way worse off because everything I import costs a fuck-ton more and I can't afford to just bump prices up accordingly when my larger competitors already have huge warehouses of stock and have the power of scale to have negotiated pricing agreements. All the OMG RED TAPE that supposedly comes from Brussels is a myth, and what few anti-small-business legislation exists is hardly likely to be removed by the prevent government, whose ear is deaf to all but the largest enterprises.
Brexit is mostly a democratic expression of xenophobia that, because of no minimum turnout requirements, means the majority has to suffer heavily thanks to a third of the country being thick.
Mind you, I could be way worse off. Those northern working class voters who thought this would be to their advantage are going to be in for a hell of a ride.
I must add that this is an excellent point. Despite higher costs for imported raw materials, the drop in Sterling is working wonders for the UK manufacturing sector. Politicians on the left and right have argued and clamoured for a "rebalancing of the economy", i.e. boosting manufacturing; now they have it. Don't believe me? Read the UK's latest PMI report (https://www.markiteconomics.com/Survey/PressRelease.mvc/f55855e5e87b4e9dadc0e3cbea1c285f). To quote: "The weak sterling exchange rate remained the prime growth engine, driving higher new orders from Asia, Europe, the USA and a number of emerging markets."
Besides, those of us who read the financial press (as I do) will be well aware the central banks have long complained of needing a currency devaluation and a bit more inflation to help western economies. Britain has, quite inadvertently, achieved precisely this.
Rule Britannia? :-)