Stiff prices

Apple charging eye-watering prices for it's products isn't news. But what Apple does in Brazil is enough to make anyone giggle.

Brazil is well know for it's sky-high electronic prices, mostly due stiff taxes on imports. But even for Brazilian standards Apple's prices beggars belief.

For better understanding Brazilian prices, please take note that I paid US$1200 for a Dell XPS 15 in 2012. The same machine could be found on the US for around US$799. Absurdly more expensive yet understandable with taxes as up as 60% in some products.

Now looking at Apple store, If one where to buy a brand new 13 inch MacBook Air in the US now the 256GB model would cost US$1299. In Brazil it sells for no less than US$2300. Jaw-dropping, isn't it?

Even for an American customer a retina MacBook Pro 15 is a somewhat pricey laptop, standing at US$2599 when coupled with a nVidia dedicated GPU. In Brazil the same model sells for unbelievable US$5600.

If you dig even further, you can't be totally baffled upon discovering that the top model business oriented Mac Pro that sells for US$9599 in the US is being sold at an absurd tag of US$19000 in Brazil. Slap me thrice and hand me to me mama!

Looking closely, it's easy to perceive Apple pricing strategy: It's basically twice the US price. Beyond reason, isn't it? If they just charged more reasonable prices, won't they be selling more computers?

I made this topic because I'm personally a big fan of MacBooks, but this price are just blatant nonsense from Apple.
What do you guys thinks?

 

Petition your government to ease its tariffs and import restrictions.

 

Yes, lower tariffs are much overdue indeed. However it seems that'd have to petition Cupertino too, as doubling the price is unreasonable even on such high taxes.
In fact, the Brazilian government made the iPad import-tax free some time ago and instead of seeing the price drop, we saw Apple rise the base model price nearly US$70.

I find Apple hardware, specially notebooks, to be top tier. It feels great. Add OS X to that and it's from the experience standpoint having a Mac Book is absolutely great. I just don't really get why they need to aim such a humongous profit in here whilst selling their products at more down to earth prices around the globe.

 

I'd go with saturnotaku's suggestion to get the Brazilian gov't to lower import taxes on electronic goods.

In the meantime, if you really want to have a (relatively) cheap Apple product in Brazil, I suppose you could buy it in from a US-based company (if you have the ability to pay with a US-based credit card or something) and have it shipped down to Brazil. Though you might have to lower the claimed value of goods to get it imported cheaply, at the risk of major loss if it gets lost/stolen/damaged...

 

Unfortunately, this is something that Apple cannot fix. They are being charged high prices by the Brazilian government to sell their products in your country. They have to pass these extra costs onto the consumer. Apple is not going to take a $1000 hit on a 13" MBA or a $3000 hit on a 15" MBPr just as Dell isn't going to take a $600 hit on their XPS 12 notebook. Even Sony had to charge an extreme price of $1845 in Brazil for the PS4 compared to the $399 in the U.S. That's a $1445 increase in price and definitely the biggest markup I have come come across (over 4 times the original cost). Again, those are such massive hits that no company would ever take. They would essentially be paying the Brazilian government to give their products away. These companies work off of a profit and this is the only way they can earn it by legitimately selling their products in your country. There's also other issues such as possible currency conversion, distribution, putting products in legitimate stores, getting products down there, etc. The U.S. and many European countries have a tight distribution network that has been established for 40+ years. There are countries that don't have this fully setup yet, at least not to the degree as they do in the U.S.

I fully understand where you are coming from but this is something that is out of Apple's hands. You can petition Apple, Sony, Dell, HP (and everyone else) all you want but the Brazilian government is the one citizens need to petition. The electronics companies can only do so much as they aren't going to take drastic financial hits just to pay the Brazilian government to give their products away there.

 

Perhaps I'll be in Japan for some time next year, so I'm thinking of getting the Broadwell refresh there.

Well, much of what you've said is entirely true, but clearly there is some exploitation by those companies.

Sony, for example. Not only Microsoft is selling their XBO for half the price Sony is asking (and even so it's quite expensive), but as Sony own PS3 was costing US$400 for over a year before the PS4 debut. US$1815 is unreasonable and they hardly "had" to do it. They did this aiming profiting on high-earning citizens.

But you're quite right. There's no pointing in petitioning companies. I talked about "petitioning Cupertino" more in a sarcastic way, since the iPad price hiked instead of going down when it got part of it's taxes axed.

 

The PS3 was on the order of $200-300 in the U.S. in that time frame, so you're still looking at 1.5-2x costs. Not sure why the prices are so much higher than the high tax rates account for, though.

 

Yep, totally out of Apple's hands. This isn't the case where they know people will still buy their products if they put a premium on it, but it's merely the markup they have to have in order to maintain profits due to the tariffs placed on them.