iPhone 4S Debuts in Over 20 New Countries, Pricing Starts as High as $1400

[brdeveloper]

That's exactly what many people actually do.



And that's why brazilians are known as the tourists that spend more money in the U.S. in the world!

The funny part is, products are so expensive here that it looks like we're rich even tho we're actually just trying to save... "-I came all the way here from Brazil just to buy a couple iPhones... -Man, you must be rich!"

In terms of electronics, this is the reality. However, our restaurants offer infinite food in buffets for USD8,00 (price for Porto Alegre). Foreign people always become impressed by our inexpensive food price, and I'm not talking about fast food. You can eat unprocessed meat, pasta, salad, fruits and desserts for less than USD10 and can dinner at a premium buffet (like a 5-star hotel restaurant in Brasília) for around USD25.

Sometimes, it's all about culture... why having electronic stuff is better than eat well?

 

[brdeveloper]

Actually, it does, but in English. Brazilians are hoping/expecting that eventually it'll offer a portuguese option.

Also, our services aren't as well "google mapped" or whatever, so if you ask for a good italian restaurant nearby, it'll probably give you a useless answer. It works for "inside the phone" stuff, like setting appointments, etc. That's what people say anyway.

A friend (who spends about 300 reais/month in cel phone bills) told me he was offered an iPhone 4S for US$600. Tho I don't know which model. So maybe there are options.

Also, most Americans are middle class. You can drive most places and still be in a decent neighborhood with a multiplex, an olive garden, good burger places, and be relatively safe. In Brazil, most people are poor. If I drive anywhere outside of the few neighborhoods where I "go", I'm up the shitcreek without a paddle.

Finally, a brazilian usually makes the "same" as an american makes in the same position: I mean, if an american makes US$2500/month in his job, a brazilian in a similar job in brazil can make R$2500/month (which is worth US$1390)...

But the problem is that 2500 dollars in the US will take you much further that 2500 reais in brazil.

I lived in Orange, CA, making about that much, and paying rent in a nice 1 bedroom ap, paying all bills, going out with friends for drinks, burger, korean bbq... and it was plenty.

If you want 2500 reais to stretch that far in Brazil, you have to live in a favela maybe. In the ********* neighborhoods. Where you'll be robbed in a second. Maybe killed.

To have the same quality of life as I did for $2500 in the US, I gotta make at least US$3500 here in Brazil, or 6000 reais. Which means, I gotta be like 2 or 3 steps further up the ladder.
It sucks.
a nice car in the US will cost you 15000 dollars. That's what I paid for a Corolla S in 2007.
A Corolla in Brazil is a rich person's car. you can get a 1.0 motor small ****** car for US$15000 (but remember, 15000 dollars for a brazilian means like 8 or 9000 for an american, based on what he makes, etc.

Some of your points are ok, but I dislike your apocaliptical vision about living here. Rio de Janeiro is NOT a battlefield. People who had never being there are losing a great touristic experience. I live in the historic centre of Porto Alegre, a place where 200-300k people (including very poor ones, some beggars) move around and I feel pretty safe. My parking lot is 350m far from my home and I walk constantly this route around 3AM to the building I live.

Corollas are the standard mid class cars in US together with that annoying SUVs that occupy 1.5 parking spaces. Why not living like european people of big cities who walk more, drive their bicycles or have a Smart Mini/Fiat 500/Mini Cooper? Why occupy so much space as we can? Why not use more public spaces than private ones? I think we, brazilians, would suffer less if we followed the european model of living than the american one. We would note that we are not soo poor as television says.

Buy an iPhone if it's affordable to you. If it's not, enjoy your life, our food, our beaches... make the economy work for you.

 

[robanga]

Tariffs are a strange game. They may have the appearance of promoting local business but usually when the whole thing is deconstructed and examined in the light of day, exactly the opposite occurs. We live in a global village, Brazilian engineers have to compete with ours, ours have to compete Chinese for the same jobs.

 

[AlanFord]

Ahh yes, its familiar to me. 500$ 4s 16gb is in my country. iPad basic is 750$
I even paid MBP i7 2.0 3,4k $.
Makes me wonna move to Usa

 

[LeandrodaFL]

Cade o ipad mais barato pro NATAL??????????

Where is the promised cheaper brasilian ipad???? It was promised for christmas, after already been delayed from a sepetember lunch

 

[Mr. Gates]

Horny

So many people so horny for a a product.

Very sad.

They don't use it in these countries, they flaunt it as a status symbol.

It is a lot of Hype

 

[Lenar F.]

iPhone 4S prices in Brazil

Sure taxes increase the price of iPhone and other Apple products in Brazil. Nevertheless, there is an unjustified reason for iPhone 4S to be released here with theses prices (haven't the foggiest). I've always bought new iPhone models, but 4S is at least US$ 540.00 more expensive. I thought Apple could explain it, because taxes are still the same.
Cheers.
Lenar

 

[ubersoldat]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

This reminds me to never move out of the states, no matter how messed our government and economy is.

yes better stay where you are because obviously you don't know that: brasil≠world

 

[xjames]

our restaurants offer infinite food in buffets for USD8,00 (price for Porto Alegre). Foreign people always become impressed by our inexpensive food price, and I'm not talking about fast food.

Indeed, I went to Porto Alegre for the first time last year, and I was impressed by how good the food was and at half the price that you pay in São Paulo.

 

[xjames]

Some of your points are ok, but I dislike your apocaliptical vision about living here. Rio de Janeiro is NOT a battlefield. People who had never being there are losing a great touristic experience. I live in the historic centre of Porto Alegre, a place where 200-300k people (including very poor ones, some beggars) move around and I feel pretty safe. My parking lot is 350m far from my home and I walk constantly this route around 3AM to the building I live.

I don't know Rio very well. I was in Porto Alegre for 3 days last year and I loved it. It feels safe, it's nice. I loved walking around the "Parcão"...

In São Paulo, when I was 16, a man with a butcher's knife got into my building's garage and made me give him all my stuff under threat of being sliced. Thank god he didn't want to go to the apartment.

6 years ago I was parked in front of my girlfriend's, making out for a couple of minutes, when a guy put a gun to my face. Thank god he only wanted the car, our wallets and cell phones, and our dignity and happiness.

My best friend, who I went to college with, was kidnapped and murdered near his house. The brother of another friend was shot in the head by unknown assailants, for an unknown reason. He was in his early 20s.

All of this happened in São Paulo, in the "good" neighborhoods. And I'm not mentioning the little things, muggings, insta-kidnappings (where they go with you to many ATMs and then hopefully release you), house thefts, etc.

Just this past friday, a friend was robbed coming out of the local shopping mall in plain daylight.

My vision may seem apocalyptic, but it's warranted. São Paulo has many good points. Amazing restaurants, good night life. But safety has gone to hell. If you go out wearing a watch and you plan to walk a few blocks, you're brave or stupid.

Maybe Rio, being tourist place, has better security, and I'm sure the favela bosses who control crime there have agreements with police to not go to the touristy spots. Porto Alegre seems more civilized. São Paulo is ****. And it's ugly.

And just to get back on topic, many brazilians like to show off by having items that cost more than they're worth. Make's em feel big. So cars and iPhones cost a small fortune.

Me, I'll skip the 4S, wait for the 5, and have a friend bring me one from the US. Or maybe I'll have enough 'points' with the cel phone provider to get a huge discount.

 

[brdeveloper]

I don't know Rio very well. I was in Porto Alegre for 3 days last year and I loved it. It feels safe, it's nice. I loved walking around the "Parcão"...

In São Paulo, when I was 16, a man with a butcher's knife got into my building's garage and made me give him all my stuff under threat of being sliced. Thank god he didn't want to go to the apartment.

6 years ago I was parked in front of my girlfriend's, making out for a couple of minutes, when a guy put a gun to my face. Thank god he only wanted the car, our wallets and cell phones, and our dignity and happiness.

My best friend, who I went to college with, was kidnapped and murdered near his house. The brother of another friend was shot in the head by unknown assailants, for an unknown reason. He was in his early 20s.

All of this happened in São Paulo, in the "good" neighborhoods. And I'm not mentioning the little things, muggings, insta-kidnappings (where they go with you to many ATMs and then hopefully release you), house thefts, etc.

Just this past friday, a friend was robbed coming out of the local shopping mall in plain daylight.

My vision may seem apocalyptic, but it's warranted. São Paulo has many good points. Amazing restaurants, good night life. But safety has gone to hell. If you go out wearing a watch and you plan to walk a few blocks, you're brave or stupid.

Maybe Rio, being tourist place, has better security, and I'm sure the favela bosses who control crime there have agreements with police to not go to the touristy spots. Porto Alegre seems more civilized. São Paulo is ****. And it's ugly.

And just to get back on topic, many brazilians like to show off by having items that cost more than they're worth. Make's em feel big. So cars and iPhones cost a small fortune.

Me, I'll skip the 4S, wait for the 5, and have a friend bring me one from the US. Or maybe I'll have enough 'points' with the cel phone provider to get a huge discount.

Sorry for you and your friends. I know of similar cases ocurred in Porto Alegre. I was robbed a couple of times when I was a teenager. My father was stolen and had his car robbed. Today I take my macbook and cell phone in a stripped bag with no signs of having electronic stuff inside. I think it's pretty safe living here if we take some care: we have to integrate with people, that is, wearing what most people wear, not having a car too expensive, not having a ostentatious attitude. I've never been in São Paulo, but I think it's a city of big contrasts. The most rich people and some of the most poor live there. I think the higher-end midclass and rich people should avoid showing wealth signs publicly.

A BMW running in the streets can be aggressive to poor people, so why not having, for example, a "complete" popular car? People here are enough of status symbols and showing this publicly can be always a source of conflict. You can show you have a bit more but not more than 99% of population.

 

[brdeveloper]

Tariffs are a strange game. They may have the appearance of promoting local business but usually when the whole thing is deconstructed and examined in the light of day, exactly the opposite occurs. We live in a global village, Brazilian engineers have to compete with ours, ours have to compete Chinese for the same jobs.

We will live in a global village only when there will not borders anymore. If, to move to USA and compete with american citizens, I have to get a visa at US consulate and also later I have to require a citizenship to authorities, the world is not that global village. So, import taxes look pretty fair. If USA, Europe, etc, are closed to receive foreign immigrants, why "underdeveloped countries" (I hate this expression because it has a lot of cultural biasing) should allow all sort of electronic superfluous passing freely through customs?

Look at China. Their model of social development is exploring people work for 50 years until the government empower itself so much that they will become bigger than USA. However, China keeps a communist thinking of "coletive suffering, coletive development". This approach wouldn't work here.

We couldn't work at a slave level for 50 years to give a nice life for out grandchildren. So, out economy will grow, maybe more than developed countries but less than China and India. I like the China model, but I'm a bit more individualist for all that altruism, so I'm happy for living in a country that grows slowly and in a sustainable manner.

So, I can wait 10 years for having a cheaper iPhone here, but I'm not able to support slavery at work.

 

[devilstrider]

Damn they ripping people off.

 

[daxomni]

Production costs in Brazil are still significantly less than if they were to move everything here to the States. Everyone benefits from free trade, so quit complaining. The data isn't on your side.

What data are you talking about? Looks like Brazil refused to play along and scored a new manufacturing plant in the process. But please don't let any new information alter your preconceived notions of acceptable financial policy.

 

[robanga]

We will live in a global village only when there will not borders anymore. If, to move to USA and compete with american citizens, I have to get a visa at US consulate and also later I have to require a citizenship to authorities, the world is not that global village. So, import taxes look pretty fair. If USA, Europe, etc, are closed to receive foreign immigrants, why "underdeveloped countries" (I hate this expression because it has a lot of cultural biasing) should allow all sort of electronic superfluous passing freely through customs?

Look at China. Their model of social development is exploring people work for 50 years until the government empower itself so much that they will become bigger than USA. However, China keeps a communist thinking of "coletive suffering, coletive development". This approach wouldn't work here.

We couldn't work at a slave level for 50 years to give a nice life for out grandchildren. So, out economy will grow, maybe more than developed countries but less than China and India. I like the China model, but I'm a bit more individualist for all that altruism, so I'm happy for living in a country that grows slowly and in a sustainable manner.

So, I can wait 10 years for having a cheaper iPhone here, but I'm not able to support slavery at work.

Its all in your definition of what "slavery" is, isn't it? I do not call the miracle that China has produced as slavery. I have been there many times and it is a different approach for certain, but hardly what i would call slavery. Indeed, although under the banner of communism/socialism, its now one of the most capitalistic places on earth.

You do make a good point about open borders for immigration and work visas etc. To truly be global those barriers need to come down.

Creating artificial economies based on taxes, tariffs, excess regulation etc. stifle growth and benefit relatively few people. There is a reason for regulation for sure (safety and the environment are two good ones) but at some point excess is just an anchor.