iPhone SE Priced at Premium in Australia and Elsewhere

[gimikinc]

Disgraceful, Apple. Discriminatory. An old design, rehashed and insanely expensive. Horrible, Apple. There's no justification for this considering profits. Hope the Australian government tax the pennies out of this company 30% for the past ten years of trade.

Don't buy it

 

[ForkHandles]

Maybe these chaps are considering paying a fair rate of corporation tax on their Australian / European sales! Hence the price hike.
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to be fair, I think paying the extra to buy in Australia under our consumer law is worth it as the warranty is much longer the 12 months Apple offers

A warranty doesn't mean a great deal in the UK. If you go and splash £700 on a new iPhone our consumer law says you have the right to expect it to be fit for purpose. If it dies after 2.5 years you can easily argue it was faulty and did not last a reasonable amount of time. The law will force Apple/reseller to replace or make good the phone.

 

[DaveP]

I have asked this question many people and surprisingly haven't really gotten a straight answer from anybody:

If an American company manufactures a product in China and then sells it in the U.S. don't they have to pay an import duty as well (which everybody assumes applies if they sell it in the European Union)? Sure, import duties (for a particular product) might be different for a product manufactured in China depending on whether it imported into Europe or the U.S. But then the opposite question applies for a European company producing in China and selling to the U.S. and the EU: would it pay higher import duties for its products going to the U.S. than for those going to Europe just because its a European company?

American auto-makers have to pay import duties when they manufacture cars abroad (which is why NAFTA boosted the creation of new Mexican car plants manufacturing GM, Ford and Chrysler cars, as it reduced or even completely removed those duties).

My notion has always been that the argument that one reason why 'U.S. products' [that are actually manufactured in China] are more expensive in Europe is that there are import duties to pay for those products when they go to Europe but not when they go to the U.S. cannot really be true. Now trade agreements including free trade zones often include clauses that take the 'local content' in a product into account, meaning how much of the value of a product and its components was created in which country. What I don't know is whether (a) such clauses exist for products imported from China to the U.S. or Europe and (b) whether 'intellectual property content' (including the actual research and development costs) can influence custom duties.

Import taxes vary greatly based on the product and its exact specs. It's tough to make sweeping generalizations, but I would say the US overall has lower import fees than Europe. I don't know what tariff code(s) are used or what the rates are, so this may not be the case for some Apple products. An electronics product I am familiar with the manufacturing of pays nothing to import into the US from China and about 8-10% for most European countries.

 

[Keane16]

Don't you feel it's pretty obvious what's going to happen in the long term?

For myself, I can only see this, in the long term meaning more will gradually start to leave Apple.
Won't happen overnight, but unless Apple do something It's going to go that way eventually.

People have predicted exactly this with MacBooks for years. Still hasn't happened.

Who knows, maybe with phones it will.

 

[617aircav]

In some of these countries warranty is 2 years by law so Apple has to factor this into the price.

 

[skinned66]

The iPhone SE 16GB converts to $438USD before taxes in Canada at the time of this message. The Apple Watch Sport however has been reduced to $302USD. Go figure.

 

[smacrumon]

Don't buy it

Thanks for a three word contribution. I won't be buying it.

 

[palmerc]

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.

First VAT is 25% across Europe. Certain food items are lower, but 25% is the rule.

Second, this article makes it clear that your understanding of foreign exchange is overly simplistic. There is no such thing as a centralized foreign-exchange market. The value you see when you plug it into a search engine is actually an average price of midpoints amongst traders they're monitoring. You will never get that price. The price an individual gets versus what a company can get are completely different. The price you can get when you want to trade one dollar or reliably trade $10 billion is wildly different.

You may recall that Apple recently reported losing quite a lot of money to foreign-exchange fluctuations. So while you may call it a premium, it may not actually be a premium.

 

[cycomiko]

If the iPad is only 3% higher with tax then you're getting a deal. Sales taxes in the US is around 6%-8% in most states. Honestly, if you include tax on US prices it's cheaper for me to buy Apple products in the UAE, where I live, than buying them when I home in the US.

I just dont know why the local ipad prices are 3% while everything else is 10-12%

There is no duty on them that wouldnt be on the ipads, so its not htat. Tax is the same. Overhead for apple is no different as they dont operate to any great extent locally. maybe phones and computers break more often?

 

[AlexBerkman]

Yikes! 20% is already such a gouge.

That high taxes gives us free education, free health service and descent social security, so I do not mind that. Taxes is a way for democracy to get some control on the capital and use it for the common good.

 

[Mums]

That high taxes gives us free education, free health service and descent social security, so I do not mind that. Taxes is a way for democracy to get some control on the capital and use it for the common good.

In your dream world lol. No more free education in the UK.

 

[lysingur]

First VAT is 25% across Europe. Certain food items are lower, but 25% is the rule.

Second, this article makes it clear that your understanding of foreign exchange is overly simplistic. There is no such thing as a centralized foreign-exchange market. The value you see when you plug it into a search engine is actually an average price of midpoints amongst traders they're monitoring. You will never get that price. The price an individual gets versus what a company can get are completely different. The price you can get when you want to trade one dollar or reliably trade $10 billion is wildly different.

You may recall that Apple recently reported losing quite a lot of money to foreign-exchange fluctuations. So while you may call it a premium, it may not actually be a premium.

25% isn't the rule at all. Your number is wrong. Please refer to this link for more accurate numbers. http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_custom...tion/vat/how_vat_works/rates/vat_rates_en.pdf

I never said anything about a centralised foreign-exchange market. I take you mean the author of the original article?

 

[kolax]

It's normal as currency fluctuates, and a company trading in another country would want to have a buffer to cover fluctuations.