ipads cheaper in the states? true or false?

[simbaleo]

The iPad, like all Apple products, are sold at roughly the same margin in every country they're sold. The difference in price is due to the difference in the cost of sales. If it is overall more expensive to bring a particular product to a particular market, then that additional cost is passed on to the consumer in that market, as is the case in the UK. Apple, like any company not completely out of their mind, passes on additional costs associated with the sale of a given product to consumers.

As such, they are functionally more expensive in the UK and elsewhere, if not intentionally so.

Anyone going "elsewhere" to purchase something "cheaper" than their local market is either skirting import/customs fees, or taking advantage of some sort of trade agreement in order to do so.

Bottom line is: If Apple could sell the devices at the US retail price worldwide, they would. In many cases they can't, due to the higher cost of sales. If you have a problem with that, you should take it up with your elected officials, not Apple, as they have nothing to do with it aside from running their company properly.

 

[Dr_Grip]

Bottom line is: If Apple could sell the devices at the US retail price worldwide, they would. In many cases they can't, due to the higher cost of sales. If you have a problem with that, you should take it up with your elected officials, not Apple, as they have nothing to do with it aside from running their company properly.

That's simply not true. Apple is a for-profit company not some kind of charity. They sell their products at the price they can get. Apple are not alone in the consumer/semi-pro electronics market. Their products have to slot into the right price bracket of the market segment in question - expensive enough to be "exclusive" but still at a point where a large enough percentage of the target demographic is willing to pay the asking price. Even before introducing a new kind of product like the iPad market research is carried out to find out what the target demographic in any given market would be willing to pay for a product with features X from brand Y if it would be available.
Consumer electronics traditionally have been cheaper in the U.S. not only and not even mostly because prices in Europe are inflated by "our elected officials" but because Europeans are used to and willing to spend a higher percentage of their available income on consumer electronics and thus the manufacturers can get away with selling their product at a higher price point, making more money.
Americans should get off their high horse of thinking that all other countries (ok, "many cases" in your case) except for freedom-loving, low-tax, libertarian pro-capitalist America smother their consumers with stupid taxes and create artificially inflated pricing.

Anyone going "elsewhere" to purchase something "cheaper" than their local market is [...] taking advantage of some sort of trade agreement in order to do so.

You are saying that like it's a bad thing.
Isn't this exactly how so-called globalization should work, the consumer equivalent of Apple outsourcing manufacturing to China: Saving money by purchasing at the lowest price available?

 

[pepitko]

There is and has been a quite a significant price difference between US and EU for some time in electronics. I always got the impression that the companies, Apple included, used following formula for prices: USD=EUR. But the difference isn't as large anymore, IMO.

I can't do the calculation on the new iPad is it isn't on sale here yet. So for instance, the cheapest MacBook Pro here is CZK 27,990/EUR 1,144/USD 1,519. But this includes 20% VAT. If you take the USD 1,199 it costs in the US store, add a 8-10% sales tax, which most states have, you end up at USD 1,318. This is a difference of 15%, where 10% comes from the higher VAT and the remaining 5% is obviously a higher margin, but this is understandable as it allows some cushion for movements in currency exchange rates.

 

[Dr_Grip]

I'd like to clarify my previous post in so far as that Apple literally can't afford to sell their devices cheaper because selling them at a lower price point would delude the "premium" brand image.

 

[IceBone]

Even though the production cost is less than 1/4. Fuck premium.

 

[hajj]

Production costs won't be much higher for a Galaxy Tab or a Motorola Zoom. Most money is spent on development with these devices, so gross margins are high.

edit:
How did you come up with your production cost?


http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/New-iPad-32-GB-4G-Carries-364-35-Bill-of-Materials.aspx

 

[Hidden_Hunter]

Try living outside of either markets, companies from Europe (have a look at the price of a Miele here for instance) and the US price gouge us

 

[simbaleo]

That's simply not true. Apple is a for-profit company not some kind of charity. They sell their products at the price they can get.

You missed my point. Yes, Apple is a for-profit company, and yes they sell their products at a price point that will return as much margin as possible. However, quite a lot of research goes into what that price point IS, and while selling an iPad for $1,000 would return quite a lot more per unit, they'd not sell anywhere near as many, and as a result lose revenue.

The US retail prices are the sweet spot for margin versus sales volume, which is why they more or less sell them at that price point everywhere else. The only difference is passing on higher costs of sales in countries where that is an issue. This is why an iPad is cheaper in Switzerland than in the UK.

Americans should get off their high horse of thinking that all other countries (ok, "many cases" in your case) except for freedom-loving, low-tax, libertarian pro-capitalist America smother their consumers with stupid taxes and create artificially inflated pricing.

Well, if you'd like to go on believing that every company in the world just likes to stick it to certain countries with very high costs of sales, that's your prerogative. The reality, however, is much less machiavellian.

For what it's worth, I never made any such contention. I simply pointed out that costs of sales are higher in certain countries, and those costs are passed on to consumers. Because they are. I also pointed out that those costs of sales are entirely due to government policy, taxation, and import duties. Because they are.

The US has its own special brand of stupidity when it comes to the free market, namely corporate taxation, which is the reason Apple has to keep some ~$60 billion in cash outside of the country-- however that is not germane to the topic at hand.

You are saying that like it's a bad thing.

Nope. My point was that most countries tend to like to collect their import duties and taxes, hence there is a difference between getting something "cheaper" due to a trade agreement-- like a UK citizen buying something in Switzerland-- and someone getting something "cheaper" due to avoiding those duties and taxes, like a Russian citizen buying something elsewhere and simply not declaring it.

 

[prizrak]

Well, of course not. I wouldn't buy one for $3.99, either, unless I could sell it on for full price.

But that's just how Apple is. So fuck Apple.

What makes you think it has anything to do with Apple? As simbaleo pointed out already there is a different cost of doing business in different countries, there is no reason for Apple to price things out of reach of consumer.... I can tell you that in the US all tablets cost roughly the same, in fact iPad has been on the cheaper end of that scale for quite a while. Obviously Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet don't really count since they are in the low price/low performance segment of the market.

Even though the production cost is less than 1/4. Fuck premium.

According to either Engadget or Apple Insider (honestly can't remmeber which posted it since I have a consolidated RSS feed) the new iPad costs about half to produce of what Apple charges and is actually around 5% more expensive than the iPad2 causing Apple to lower their margins a bit. As was mentioned production costs don't matter much, the money goes to employ engineers, programmers, sales people, support personnel, rent on the stores, people who review stuff in the App Store, cleaning and maintenance staff, buying up companies with know how, bullying *AA into allowing things like iTunes Match and iCloud downloads, suing other companies for alleged patent violations, defending from lawsuits for alleged patent violations, advertising, etc... A lot of money goes into making a company run and if you remember your history Apple fell from their pedestal very quickly in the 80's when they failed to innovate fast enough.

 

[IceBone]

I got the Acer Iconia Tab A500, at the time the equivalent of the iPad 2 16GB, for $350 via Joel.

 

[simbaleo]

I'd like to clarify my previous post in so far as that Apple literally can't afford to sell their devices cheaper because selling them at a lower price point would delude the "premium" brand image.

Apple's brand has very little to do with being "premium" in the eyes of consumers. In fact, they got nothing but hell from the electronic and computing press for well over a decade for their "over-priced, under-powered" computers. Their brand is one of innovation, design elegance and overall functionality. Apple products "just work", which is why people pay more for them than, say, Android tablets with UIs made by people who have very little understanding (or interest) in how normal humans interact with technology.

If Apple could sell iPads for $300 and maintain a ~$200 margin on the device, they would, because they'd sell many more of them. Go reference the historical price of Apple's computers and iPods, for example. You will note they continually get faster and cheaper as technology evolves, and you will also note that as that happens, they sell more units.

They didn't become the most valuable company on the planet by being stupid. Apple spends a lot of time and money in market research, and hence the pricing on their products has very little to do with elitism in certain markets, and everything to do with maximizing profit as a function of margin vs. volume.

If they gave a crap about elitism, they wouldn't be selling their products via Wal-Mart.

 

[simbaleo]

I got the Acer Iconia Tab A500, at the time the equivalent of the iPad 2 16GB, for $350 via Joel.

Equivalent in what? Hardware specs? It certainly isn't anything like equivalent in size, battery life, or UI design.

As with many products, the iPad is more than the sum of its parts.

 

[IceBone]

The screen is larger, has more pixels, the same number of cores @ the same speed twice as much RAM, it has a dedicated USB host port, dedicated hdmi-out port, external storage and the battery life is roughly the same. It runs Android 4.0, which is a much better operating system. It doesn't flow as smoothly, but that's down to the way the different operating systems handle their rendering threads/streams. There are more apps in the market for Android now than they are for iOS and you can literally do everything you can with an iPad and more, 10 fold.

Your point?

 

[prizrak]

I got the Acer Iconia Tab A500, at the time the equivalent of the iPad 2 16GB, for $350 via Joel.

Can't comment on equivalency as I never used one but I can tell you that the Transformer Prime can't touch even the iPad2 much less the new one and that's the fastest most awesomest ICS running Android tablet. The interface was kind of jerky, when I tried to watch a video (NFLX and a local file) audio wouldn't work till restart and you could see the digitizer grid on the screen. Yes it was $500 for a 32GB version so about a $100 cheaper than equivalent iPad but honestly I would rather have the iPad...

It runs Android 4.0, which is a much better operating system. It doesn't flow as smoothly, but that's down to the way the different operating systems handle their rendering threads/streams.

How is the OS better?

There are more apps in the market for Android now than they are for iOS

O'RLY? How many of those apps are actually optimized for tablets and not just a stretched out versions of the phone apps? How many are made for ICS and take advantage of all the new features? How many of them contain malware?

and you can literally do everything you can with an iPad and more, 10 fold.

What is it that you can do on an Android that you can't on iOS? Specific examples please... I can tell you what I can do on my iPad that I can't on the Prime for instance... Connect to a cell network w/o an external device, simply because ASUS doesn't offer that as an option... at all.... (won't even get into the performance benchmarks because they are meaningless to me I just know that what I got works just fine and is smooth and responsive...)

 

[hajj]

I got the Acer Iconia Tab A500, at the time the equivalent of the iPad 2 16GB, for $350 via Joel.

So you are comparing your grey/black import Iconia to the current price of an iPad 2 in your country? That makes no sense at all.

 

[IceBone]

No, to the at-the-time price of an iPad 2, which was 30-50% more.

 

[hajj]

Well at $350 that is certainly possible. How long does the battery last in the Iconia and can you charge via USB?

 

[prizrak]

Another point to make about Apple stuff specifically is that in the US they are not subject to any importation laws as they are a US company.

EDIT: Just read this news story, Galaxy Tab 7.7 VZ LTE is $700 w/o a contract, iPad was $630...

 

[IceBone]

The charger is standard micro USB unfortunately not a micro USB port, as that doesn't support the required voltage, but it's one of the standard cillindrical ones and the battery life is 8-9 hours at full load (720p movie at full brightness, for instance). The USB port can be used to charge other devices and transfer files from them via the mass storage protocol.

 

[su_hy]

The BLS gives me average weekly earnings of $804.20, so for an iPad (without taxes) someone earning an average salary has to work 62% of a week or 21.4h. In the UK the average weekly earnings are ?461, so so for an iPad (including VAT) someone earning an average salary has to work 86.5% of a week or 27.5h. So yes the starting price is lower, but even then you have to work longer in the UK.
If you add a 10% sales tax, you would have to work 23.5h in the US.

Are those after tax salaries or before tax? I assume after tax (what you finally get as an employee).
For Poland it would be:
Avarage monthly pay: 2552,99 z? = 807.04 USD
Avarage weekly pay: 638,25 z? = 201.73 USD

Price for the cheapest iPad in Poland: 2099 z? = 663.54 USD

Sooo, you have to work 82,21% of a month to get one, or for easy comparison 328,8% of a week

Good thing I don't want one anyway.