It's not that bad for the UK. The American price of $399 I presume is without sales tax which equates to £280 at current rates so with our 20% VAT (sales tax for non uk readers) it takes it up to £336 for us.
So yes there is a little premium attached to it of £23 but not as bad as the article makes out.
Why is this even a story? US don't include sales tax which is why they seem a lot cheaper than other countries pricing.
It's not that bad for the UK. The American price of $399 I presume is without sales tax which equates to £280 at current rates so with our 20% VAT (sales tax for non uk readers) it takes it up to £336 for us.
So yes there is a little premium attached to it of £23 but not as bad as the article makes out.
This, plus the fact that the new 9.7 inch iPad "pro" is priced at ¥64800, somewhat around with $599 with today's FX rate, making the pricing of SE unreasonable.Yep. ¥52,800 (about $475) not including tax here in Japan (where we don't even have ApplePay, which I think is the most compelling new feature). I'll definitely be hanging on to my 5s for a while longer.
Are the European prices before or after tax? If they're after-tax, it's not that surprising considering VAT can be upwards of 20% in France and just slightly less in other European countries.
You seem to have forgotten to take in to account import tax. There's also going to be 'thuiskopieheffing' added in there along the way too.Even if you take the salestax into account the product is a lot more expensive in the EU.
$399 = €355 + 21% NL tax = €429,55
however they charge us €489. So we pay an additional €60 or $67
For further amusement, look at the 9.7" iPad Pro prices in Australia.
Or any Apple prices in Australia.
It's hilarious to watch US prices revealed on stage. They bear no relation to reality anywhere else in the world.
Biggest reason I'm not upgrading my iPad? Outrageous prices for something that can really only do email, web and show photos.
Any serious work, I use a Mac. iPad is a casual use device, based on an OS crippled to run on a 3.5" phone. Giving it a desktop class processor and split view, is bullet point marketing. It's not that kind of device. Sure make it lighter, faster, brighter, but nobody needs those features.
There's no chance I'm upgrading my iPhone 6 Plus this year at the prices Apple's charging. They've priced themselves out of the market for all but those who just don't care about the cost.
Way to change the world, Tim. Just keep jacking up prices until you lose loyal customers. Any wonder the majority of Apple's income comes from overseas… for the moment.
Okay, I've done the maths!
Selecting a few different Apple products, and pricing them up before addition of taxes, and comparing them to the US $ price.
Note - this is based upon xe.com currency conversion which no consumer exchange would ever offer, so you could add a few % to these prices if you wanted a realistic currency valuation.. but we'll stick to the bank rates for simplicity here.
View attachment 622443
As you can see, the UK actually does pretty well, with several products actually cheaper here. The biggest difference is indeed for the iPhone SE, at 4% more in the UK. But this can easily be accounted for by currency and import figures.
So in fairness, I think Apple has converted the $ amount, and rounded up or down as needed to make the GBP a round xx9 figure!
Australia and Euro-countries such as Germany do slightly less well, however.
Only one product out of the seven I selected was cheaper in these countries than the US.
The remainder all saw an increase of up to 15%.
Again currency and import eat into that figure...
But I certainly don't feel this is as much of an Apple foreign-country markup tax as many are suggesting.
The higher prices paid in these countries are far more a result of local VAT / sales taxes than any Apple initiated-markup. UK VAT at 20% really hikes the prices. But that's hardly Apple's fault.
You made a mistake, you have to add 100€ to the iSE 64Gb's price in Europe...
It's not that bad for the UK. The American price of $399 I presume is without sales tax which equates to £280 at current rates so with our 20% VAT (sales tax for non uk readers) it takes it up to £336 for us.
So yes there is a little premium attached to it of £23 but not as bad as the article makes out.
...there are quite a few states in the U.S. where anyone can go into an Apple Store and buy one and pay no sales tax at all.
Why is this even a story? US don't include sales tax which is why they seem a lot cheaper than other countries pricing.
This level of premium has always existed for every Apple product and can easily be explained by stronger consumer protection laws in Europe, UK and Australia, such as mandatory or implied minimum 2 year warranties for electronic devices.
I got a free repair for an out of warranty 2.5 year-old laptop because of them, and so I should for a high end MacBook Pro costing as much as it does it should be built for a minimum guaranteed life of 3 years without having to pay extra.
Gosh, and reading Gizmodo's 'reviews' yesterday sounded more like hit pieces than anything at all fact based.
It is odd that Apple would price them so high though. Are they actually paying more duties in each country, or are foreign buyers subsidizing US iPhone buyers...
Along with all the tipping that the Americans do, buying anything in the US must be incredibly frustrating and somewhat confusing.
So, after tax and tips, how much is the iPhone SE in America?