Oh my goodness, I wasn’t trying to start a fight! My post was only meant to be a friendly anecdote from a different perspective.
Sure, but it's important to provide the right data. A lot of the EU posters complain about high prices, but they shut up when presented with the fact those prices include 20% or more in VAT.
Most customers in the U.S. pay sales tax as well, so it's important to compare apples to apples, which is the pre-tax price.
Fair enough. It seems so bizarre to me that shops might list pre-tax prices that I forget that's how it's done in the U.S. My bad. I can't complain about Apple's methods for pricing here, as their prices are usually just the U.S. price converted to Australian dollars, plus the 10% GST. From my observations, they will usually adjust the price when a new model is released.
In addition, you seem to have forgotten that AU dollars are not the same as US dollars.
The AU $999 price for the iPhone 16e converts to approximately US $649.58.
The AU $1399 price for the iPhone 17 converts to approximately US $909.35.
So ~$250 difference, not $400. And those dirt-cheap American prices are not quite as dirt cheap as you allege.
Wow, I must be such an idiot! How stupid of me for not realising that Australia and the U.S. are different!
Anyone who watches or listens to the news here knows the exchange rate. Today, an Australian dollar buys 65 cents US, which is about normal. Back, I don't know, 15-20 years ago or something, the AU$ would buy US$1.10, but that didn't last. Our exporters hated it!
Overall, purchasing power is fairly similar between Australia and the U.S. There is less of a wealth gap here, with poorer Australians being better off than their equivalent in the U.S., and I think the middle class might be a larger percentage of the population here, so in relative terms, the prices are actually broadly equivalent. Upgrading a phone is still a considerable cost, with Pro Max prices getting perilously close to second-hand car prices!
So maybe Apple behaves better internationally than other companies do, but it's common knowledge that buying things here will often cost a lot more than buying the same thing elsewhere.
en.wikipedia.org
