Apple Adjusts International App Store Prices

[striker33]

By and large, the UK hardware isn't all that badly priced. People forget that our price includes 20% VAT while the US list price DOESN'T include their state sales tax. Yes, we pay more but it's well within reason for a foreign company.

Even when sales tax is added in the US, the difference is still a few hundred £££. This is on top of Apple's already huge profit margins.

Someone pointed all the figures out earlier and it was nothing short of disgraceful.

The whole Apple TV costing £101 here but only $99 in the US is by far the easiest and one of the best examples of how ridiculous Apple's prices are outside of the US.

 

[programmasters]

Regarding EUR/NOK; 3-4 months pay in Norway now buys you a nice, decent house in Spain, so I´m fairly happy that were not part of the EU/hasn´t converted to Euro...

Yup sorry I ever said Norway was a part of EU. But I think everybody In the EU find the Britisch arrogant for thinking they can be a part of the EU without accepting the euro. But as I said earlier, that's beside the question. The real discussion is apple raising/lowering prices.

 

[gnasher729]

£0.59 is closer to £0.615 than £0.69 in my mind.

£0.615 + 20% vat = £0.738.

If Apple applies this pricing policy of charging its international customers more or less the dollar price in their local currency at current conversion rates, then the white MacBook Air should be £750 in the UK rather than the current £867, assuming they retain a $999 price point in the US.

For hardware, you need to add VAT, plus the cost of better warranty.

 

[bigp9998]

Apple are seriously going to price themselves out of the market soon here when it comes to their computers.

I know that most people here (myself included) treat their macs like a loved one but there comes a point where this "relationship" becomes too expensive to maintain.

Seriously, to you Americans, come and live here for a couple of years on a mid-level wage/student etc and you will cry at how quickly your wallet gets empty. Fuel, Electricity/Gas, Tax, Rail Fares all at silly prices and are going up.

Oh well at least your internet in general (price/speed) compared to us ****ing sucks!

Yes, you pay more for petrol and have a high VAT, but you also have the NHS and affordable universities. There are quite a few tradeoffs.

 

[AAPLaday]

I need a dollar dollar, a dollar is what I need. And a US iTunes account. Bloody £

 

[JonR356]

Maybe you should have wrote your point in better English?
.

I think you mean written.

 

[Kebabselector]

affordable universities.

What at £9,000 a year?

But I think everybody In the EU find the British arrogant for thinking they can be a part of the EU without accepting the euro.

We weren't ready at the time, and now looks as if we are never going in. Initially though I was pro Euro, so not all of us thought it was a bad thing.

 

[striker33]

Yes, you pay more for petrol and have a high VAT, but you also have the NHS and affordable universities. There are quite a few tradeoffs.

Affordable Universities?!?!?!?!?!??!

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha

Also, the NHS is awful. By the time you finally get treatment for whatever ailment you have, its either cured itself or you're dead.

 

[programmasters]

What at £9,000 a year?

If I am correct, some universities in the us charge up to 50.000$

 

[Merthyrboy]

Does this mean the £65 Mac App Store card in the student promo will also increase? Of course not, how silly of me!

I've still not worked out the logic behind this...

$99 Apple TV = £101
$100 Mac App Store Card = £65

If you convert $100 into pounds then it's about £62 so we do get a nice little treat of a whole £3 more. Oh yeah! I could use that to buy a £2.99 app now that should be the same as before.

 

[Sambo110]

Australian prices should really be the same, or cheaper, than US, considering our dollar has been worth more than the US for quite a while now.

 

[apolloa]

Yes, you pay more for petrol and have a high VAT, but you also have the NHS and affordable universities. There are quite a few tradeoffs.

WOW, hold on there feller, we pay for the NHS heavily in our taxes, and even if you have private health insurance you STILL pay the same for the NHS in your taxes.
And I think a lot of students will tell you a debt of $43659 for a university degree, is hardly "affordable'!

 

[ThatsMeRight]

Why is everybody complaining about UK pricing? I mean, come on. Only the euro countries have right to complain: euro countries pay the most for Apple products. Not much compared to the UK, but euro countries still pay more.

An iPad 64 GB + 3G in the UK costs 1061.2536 U.S. dollars (without VAT: 884.378 US dollars).
An iPad 64 + 3G in most euro countries costs 1130.1855 U.S. dollars (without VAT: 949.7357142857144 US dollars)

So I believe it's only fair that the UK is going to pay more. I also believe international prices are still way to high up compared to the US (if you take the prices without VAT).

I mean, if it's a bit higher compared to the US than I can understand it. Apple also has to pay extra for shipping and European rules etc., but they don't have to pay a extra 150 dollar for each iPad 64 GB + 3G.

Hmm. In the Dutch store some items are now cheaper (the iPad for instance is now 20 Euros less).

However, a lot of items haven't changed in price at all.

Nothing changed, mate. It's always been 479 since the introduction of the iPad 2. As mentioned before, Apple still cares least for Europe. The only reason they can do this, is because Europeans are loyal to brands (take a look at Sony for example, the PS3 launched here 2 years after the Xbox 360 but yet somehow the PS3 is ahead of the Xbox 360 in most of Europe).

For your information it's Belgian instead of belgianese. Now I hope we can settle this, I concur "its" was correct, but now you know how annoying it is when somebody corrects you on something you already know. Even Englishmen will make mistakes against their language, so why should I be able to write perfectly? As it is literally the fourth language I had to learn.(In only 6 years). Now, we can begin posting about language(which I admit I started) But let's focus on the discussion at hand, which is the in my view fair [price changes apple made(naturally the people negatively affected by this aren't happy, but I still think the changes are fair)

That's no excuse. Four languages in six years? I live in the Netherlands and in the first three years of high school we have got to learn Dutch, German, French and English (and if you do the highest eduction in high school Latin + Greece as well). All you really have to 'learn' is German and English, you grow up with Dutch and French.

It doesn't happen that often (at this forum) that someone blames you for having trouble with your English, but don't go and talk Dutch. That is rude.

 

[gkpm]

For UK commenters the old prices (eg 59p) were set on the old VAT rate, have some already forgotten it went up not so long ago?

 

[JonR356]

Affordable Universities?!?!?!?!?!??!

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha

Also, the NHS is awful. By the time you finally get treatment for whatever ailment you have, its either cured itself or you're dead.

What's with all the manic laughter on here?

There are relatively few universities charging that full amount. Also, when you look at the likely benefits of an education from one of the top universities which does, it's not a bad return on investment. People will 'invest' a huge amount on a house in the UK, investing in yourself isn't a bad thing.

The NHS isn't perfect, but it's not a bad system of free health care. Outcomes on certain illnesses (particularly cancer) could be better, but on the whole it's not a bad model.

 

[iKrl]

I'm not happy about having to pay 2 pesos more for my apps, however if they lowered their hardware prices to have the exchange rate of 1 USD to 12 MXN I would be.
That is not the case, most of the Macs are still at an exchange rate of 13.5 MXN to 1 Dollar (I'm deducting the Tax here).

 

[JonR356]

WOW, hold on there feller, we pay for the NHS heavily in our taxes, and even if you have private health insurance you STILL pay the same for the NHS in your taxes.
And I think a lot of students will tell you a debt of $43659 for a university degree, is hardly "affordable'!

A great point there, it's about time those in the UK with private health cover got a tax rebate. As per the Australian model.

 

[Kebabselector]

If I am correct, some universities in the us charge up to 50.000$

Sorry I wouldn't know that. Probably is the case though.

 

[apolloa]

What's with all the manic laughter on here?

There are relatively few universities charging that full amount. Also, when you look at the likely benefits of an education from one of the top universities which does, it's not a bad return on investment. People will 'invest' a huge amount on a house in the UK, investing in yourself isn't a bad thing.

The NHS isn't perfect, but it's not a bad system of free health care. Outcomes on certain illnesses (particularly cancer) could be better, but on the whole it's not a bad model.

Since when has the NHS been 'Free"?? Please tell? And as for universities charging the top amount, well unless you live under a rock then more and more universities have stated they will charge the full amount, even if they dont then half that £9000 a year is still at the end of a 3 year course £13500 or $21838.

 

[ThatsMeRight]

£0.615 + 20% vat = £0.738.

You forget something, that 0.59 is already with the 20% vat. 0.59 without vat is 0.49166666666666664.

0.49166666666666664 pounds = 0.79178 US dollars

---------------------
Offtopic (discussion above).
I can't believe that some Europeans here are trying to deny that things in Europe are better organized (like health care). I mean come on, I can call any general practitioner if there's something going on and they will be here within 15 minutes with an ambulance. And what do you have to pay? Absolutely nothing (unless you are faking something is going on, than a fine is what you have to pay of course).

But that is not the point. See my previous post. As you can see you just pay much more in the UK and euro countries when you take the price without VAT. The price without VAT should be much closer. Like if the difference is only $25 or so, it's more understandable. $25 can be used for shipping to Europe (I mean, shipping from China to Europe is more expensive than shipping from China to almost anywhere). And there are some European Regulations, but they don't cost hundreds of dollars extra.

And to start another discussion. It's about time that the US is going to spend less on military and foreign affairs (no offence, but the US just wants to be part of all sorts of millitary operations in any foreign country). And it's also time they start charging more VAT. Come on, the US has a public debt of 14 460 000 000 000 (14.46 trillion) U.S. dollars and this is increasing. You guys keep spending money.

And in Europe? Well, look at Greece for example. They have a public debt of 'just' 469800000000 US dollars (469.8 billion). That's quite some difference, but for some reason we (EU) say "there's a problem and we've got to solve it", while you just keep on spending money. Greece 'only' has a debt of 3.25% of the debt of the US.

 

[JonR356]

Since when has the NHS been 'Free"?? Please tell? And as for universities charging the top amount, well unless you live under a rock then more and more universities have stated they will charge the full amount, even if they dont then half that £9000 a year is still at the end of a 3 year course £13500 or $21838.

The NHS has been free for many people for a long time. Certainly those who don't pay income tax and are exempt from prescription charges (a large proportion of the population than you may think)

The number of universities charging the maximum isn't that high. Not sure of your maths there, perhaps you should have attended one of them.

 

[coops108]

Apple wants to make it fair for everyone. That means every country should pay the same price (compared to USD). There is tax by the way. $0.99 USD -> 0.920587688 Australian dollars, +10% GST = 1.01264646. $0.99? Fair.

Also, the developers get 70% off the purchases.

In AUS we dont add gst on top of our advertised price. we just advertise the final price and that includes the 10% gst. $0.99 usd = $0.92 AUD. apple are not going to round it down to the nearest .09 which would be 0.89. they are going to round it up to 0.99 so it covers them if the exchange market goes the other way. the same for UK. 0.99 usd= 0.61 GBP they they round it up to 0.69.

 

[programmasters]

That's no excuse. Four languages in six years? I live in the Netherlands and in the first three years of high school we have got to learn Dutch, German, French and English (and if you do the highest eduction in high school Latin + Greece as well). All you really have to 'learn' is German and English, you grow up with Dutch and French.

It doesn't happen that often (at this forum) that someone blames you for having trouble with your English, but don't go and talk Dutch. That is rude.

Sorry, I didn't know it was rude to try and translate something which has no real counterpart in English. I wanted to give the real words before I loosely translated. So I am truly sorry. However we do have to learn french(germanic vs romanic), it's not just in our brain how we have to write, translate, etc., when we are born. And to be quite honest, I have never met a Dutchman who was able to speak french proficiently to pass belgian tests. And indeed, we too study greek if we choose to.(not greece). But what irritated me was that somebody didn't agree with me so he attacked my language(because of an ' ) Which was truly an error caused by typing to fast. Instead of reasoning about views on the world

 

[Kebabselector]

The number of universities charging the maximum isn't that high.

You might want to check out this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12880840

 

[torbjoern]

Here in Norway, they charge us NOK 8.50 on the dollar for hardware (in average). The rate at xe.com is around 5.50 which is reflected by the value of iTunes gift cards in the Norwegian Apple Store ($100 = NOK 550). And now they raise the rates in AppStore from NOK 6.00 to NOK 7.00 per dollar??