Australian Govt Forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft To Explain Price Hikes 371
An anonymous reader writes "Live outside the U.S.? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the U.S."
So obvious.. (Score:5, Funny)
Printing the instructions upside down costs money silly.
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
Please mod +5 informative. This is the actual answer.
Re:The FED (Score:5, Funny)
When you print money to pay off debts the currency devalues and it is a no brainer. THe exchange rates are going downhill as the house wants to debate whether to default or not eveyr 3 months.
Therefore, the Bank of Australia wants a higher percentage to avoid the risk as the dollar is the worlds worst currency right now with the highest risk. ... Well Japan might be tieing the US in this area if the government improves more printing of money.
So MS responds with the 30% premium to convert dollars to Australias currency by passing it on to the consumer.
IT also explains why healthcare costs are skyrocketing up with insurnace, food, housing and student loans while incomes decline. All this free money given to rich by low interest rates inflates the money supply.
Holy shit. It's a real life application of the Chewbacca Defense. This is amazing... :)
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Translate this to legalese: (Score:5, Funny)
This is the actual answer.
No it isn't. The real reason is that Australia has a relatively small population, so the cost of translating all the documentation into Australian is spread across fewer customers.
Re:So obvious.. (Score:5, Funny)
Got to localize the instructions. Rooting your computer means something entirely different. Electrocution hazard if the instructions got into the hands of a drunk bloke. What am I saying, they don't read instructions.
I know why. (Score:5, Funny)
. . . it's because they have to translate their product into a weird foreign language. Right?
American psychology (Score:2, Funny)
It's not that non-US prices are higher, it is that US prices are made low. This is because Americans are cheap bastards even though many have lots of money to spend. It is a big market, but one you can only break into at discount prices. On the plus side, it is easier to offload low quality goods to the US. Many companies are learning fast and sending lower QA-scoring product runs to the US, sometime even seperate products for specific low-quality US chains like Walmart. However, if your products are new or susceptible to review, or cheap enough to produce copies like software, you send the quality stuff and lose out on per-unit profit to get a share of American consumerism.
As a consumer in the long term, I wouldn't try rushing to emulate the US. Sure, you can get bread and cheese there at a super low price, but on the other hand you're likely to end up eating cheeze whiz and wonder bread.
Re:bad idea ? (Score:5, Funny)
Let me have a go:
Monkey == Human
Robot == Overlord
Zombie == Politician
What do I win?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)