Apple's Haves and Have Nots, Around the World

Rambo Tribble writes "As this story in the Economist notes, Apple's policies regarding international sales are often confusing and outdated. Apparently, Apple either hasn't been aware of political and social changes in the world over the last 20 years, or doesn't wish to acknowledge them." Soulskill rightly notes that at least some of the complained-about policies boil down to Apple's adherence to local copyright and licensing laws.

Apples website in general

[lul_wat]

Apples website is generally a shambles. I'm trying to develop iPhone applications and it's useless and difficult to navigate.

Also try looking at the technical specifications of the iPhone - it's just a bulletpoint list of features- hardly 'technical'

Basically their website sucks, and the sucking doesn't stop there with Apple

Re:And EU global market ?

[lordholm]

The treaties are for the states, not the companies. The second issue is that at the moment the intellectual property market is split up due to the licensing agencies that are authorised to handle different states.

The EU is doing something about this though, and we can most likely expect to see something happen during the current commission, the last one took substantial steps in this area, but clearly not enough.

Fiefdoms

[DNS-and-BIND]

My guess: international sales are a fief of various barons and counts of Apple corp. No interest in upgrading because it wouldn't serve the interest of whoever's in charge.

As an aside, wtf is up with the bizarre tone of the article? "What has Apple got against eastern Europe?" "Cold warriors"? WTF? Seems a rather strange take on disorganization inside a mega-corporation. Or is this all a giant case of projection, where journalists attribute their own undesirable feelings onto others?

Its because doing business in Europe costs more

[antifoidulus]

For those complaining that Apple screws over it's non-US customers, take a look at the apple store Japan. Despite the really strong yen most things in the Apple store in Japan cost about the same(esp. when you consider that the 5% tax is already included) as they do in the US store, while those in Europe tend to cost a lot more.

Obviously part a big part of the discrepancy is the sales tax, but doing business in Europe just plain costs more. Shipping from China(where most of Apples stuff is made) to Europe is obviously more expensive than shipping to Japan or the US(largely because there isn't really a direct sea route), but thats only part of the reason.

European consumers and employees tend to enjoy a lot more protections under the law then those in the US and Japan. For instance tt costs more to hire(and fire) the European workers that man the warehouses and shipping facilities, Apple is responsible for paying to properly dispose of all electronics it sells, European consumers can make Apple pay for a much wider range of repairs to products then can consumers in the US or Japan etc.

Not saying whether or not these protections are good or bad, but many Europeans don't seem to realize that they certainly aren't free. If you want these protections then you are going to have to be willing to pay for them, otherwise if you want them then stuff is going to cost more, end of story.

Apple sales worldwide can be annoying

[dafing]

As a New Zealander, living in a country of a voluminous FOUR million, it sucks being left out. Yes, the NZ release of the iPad has been announced...but its been a long time for many NZ Apple fans, I bet many worldwide have been annoyed.

The first iPhone sold in NZ was the 3G. I imported an Original iPhone, it ended up costing me $790 NZD ($564 odd USD) all up, and I run it on a prepaid plan, no set monthly costs. The 3G iPhone would have cost over 1000 NZD new, so I saved A LOT of money, *AND* had a product months before it was released in my country. A Win Win situation!

Sadly my iPad will have cost me more than if I had waited, but I stick by my decision to buy an import when I did. I've had my iPad for a couple weeks now, and an extra hundred odd dollars is worth it to me. I remember going slowly insane over the NZ iPhone wait...hearing every single blog on the internet (even the gardening sites!) talk talk talk about the iPhone...how great it is, how wonderful, who needs Jesus when we have this wonderful iPhone....I'd rather pay a couple hundred more than have to put up with that for months, especially when the dates are "to be confirmed".

But hey, if the worst thing you have to whine about in life is that you have to wait a couple months for the latest gadget....perhaps I shouldnt be complaining :)

Re:Its because doing business in Europe costs more

[Shin-LaC]

You're looking at the problem from the wrong end. It's not about costs at all, it's about how much people are willing to pay. European customers were used to paying more, so Apple had no reason to lower prices.

Recently, however, it seems that things are changing. Maybe it's because consumers are more conscious of their spending due to the economic situation; maybe it's the increasing pressure from low-cost PCs; maybe Apple simply wants to expand its market share in Europe at last.

Whatever the reason, the cheapest MacBook is now $999 in the US, and €902 in Italy. Take out the 20% VAT and you get €721.6, which at the current rate is just $919 - actually less than in the US store.

Not just Apple

[dmesg0]

Google is even worse in this regard, you can't buy applications on the android market if you are not from a few select countries [wikipedia.org].

Thankfully most apps are free, and if one really wants to buy something, it can be done elsewhere - no single app market limitation like with the iph*ne. It's also easy to install MarketEnabler hack on rooted phones (makes google think you're in the US). But I really fail to understand why no-evil Google is doing that

Re:Free trade within EU

[RoscBottle]

Wrong. If you order from another EU country the company is required to charge your local VAT. It is mainly luxury and media taxes that can be dodged, but only if they're charged at the engros level or later. For example; I can (and do) avoid paying the Danish media tax on writable discs by ordering from Germany, but I still pay Danish VAT. The evil Swedish goverment insidiously charges the insanely high luxury-tax on snus at production level, so I get to pay that AND Danish VAT, even though I live in Denmark (where the tax on smoke-free tobacco is a more lenient less than 10€/kg). Yes, an opinion irrelevant to TFA snuck in, but there you are.

Re:Its because doing business in Europe costs more

[mikael_j]

Whatever the reason, the cheapest MacBook is now $999 in the US, and €902 in Italy. Take out the 20% VAT and you get €721.6, which at the current rate is just $919 - actually less than in the US store.

Yes it does seem like Apple has finally started to use the real exchange rate when calculating the value of the "Apple dollar", here in Sweden the cheapest macbook costs SEK 9995 with sales tax which comes to just over $1000 without the sales tax. But this is definitely something fairly new, it used to be that people joked about how the "Apple dollar" had a SEK 15 : $1 exchange rate even when the real dollar was at SEK 7 : $1. There was even some guy who made a blog post when the macbook pro first came out, in this post he detailed how he was able to fly to the US, purchase a US mbp + swedish keyboard, stay a night in a hotel and finally fly back for less than the cost of a mbp in Sweden...

Re:Apples website in general

[lul_wat]

* Accelerometer

How many G's does it measure - how many axis of measurement - maximum sample rate.

* Proximity sensor

Range of measurement - is it 1cm? 1m? 10m? Infra-red? Sonic? Where on the phone is it located?

* Ambient light sensor

Is it on/off or different levels of light?

etc etc.

Re:Fiefdoms

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is one thing that Apple is not, it's disorganized. And there are no barons or fiefs at apple. Just one control freak emperor. So I think your underlying assumption is wrong and therefore I don't think the tone of the article is strange at all.

Are these Windows limitations?

[UnknowingFool]

The article showed a setup window for iTunes for Windows. It seems to imply that there was a lack of languages. Is this a limitation on the Windows version? For languages, I can see far more options on OS X than listed in the article. Furthermore are they limitations on Windows?