Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, et. al. please take note that the US Dollar price for your product multiplied at the current exchange rate, plus 15% value added tax (UK sales tax at today’s rate) is a lot less than the price you charge us for your software.
For example:
- The Apple Snow Leopard 10.6 update announced today is $29 in the US or £17.67 at the current exchange rate, plus 15% VAT bringing it to just over £20. But Apple thinks the UK consumer can stump up an extra 20% and pay £25. It may only be a fiver but the same principle applies across the entire product range.
- Microsoft’s Windows 7 Ultimate Edition Upgrade (there will now be an upgrade version of Windows 7 in Europe) costs $219 (which works out at £133.48). Add the sales tax and we’re up to just over £150 but Microsoft wants UK customers to pay £199!
A 20-25% uplift is pretty bad (and the VAT will be back to at least 17.5% at the end of January 2010) but Apple and Microsoft are clearly not pushing this as far as they can… let’s look at what Adobe charges:
- Adobe Photoshop CS4 is $699 in the States (which is £373.03, or £428.98 if we include the VAT) but, get this, Adobe charges us £615.25 – that’s almost a 45% premium… it’s a good job they’re offering free shipping at the moment if I spend more than £350.
Just to be clear, I didn’t deliberately pick the most expensive products to make software vendors look bad. These are the latest operating system releases from Apple/Microsoft and probably Adobe’s best-known product. No wonder the UK is the third-most expensive country in the world.
Yes but you’re forgetting all the effort that they put in to localise the software so that everything appears to be just right for people that use non-American English. If I remember correctly that was an excuse dragged up in a PC Pro article several months ago.
You know, the way that colour is always spelt correctly, oh right yeah I forgot they don’t bother to do that.
“Non-American English”. You mean “English” don’t you ;-) (as opposed to “American”). I know your comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek but I could cut Apple and Microsoft some slack there. AFAIK, Adobe only ships one English language variant though.