Exactly this, the dollar price is the basis of Apple’s pricing structure. A strong dollar means Apple products rise in price in overseas markets. How else would Luca Maestri explain why the European divisions are bringing in less revenue (in dollars) just because exchange rates have a meltdown? There have been periods in history where the pound was getting close to $2 and uk mac prices were good but should have been better thats for another post - discuss UK and ‘treasure island’ economy.
And this is, with respect, nonsense.
Why are you quibbling over VAT when the points being made are about foreign exchange rates and their effect on the retail prices in overseas markets as set by Apple? Regardless of whether VAT is added or not if US Apple in-store prices don’t change and UK Apple store prices go up £100 (see M2 MacBook Pro) then Apple have raised the prices in the UK. It has nothing to do with VAT unless the uk government decides to change the rate of VAT to try and stimulate growth.
the point of the Euro currency is to have greater price transparency across the EU, Apple set the selling price and in the EU that has to include VAT, so each member state sells for a slightly different price plus local VAT to achieve the ticket price. US prices are bizarre to most Europeans because the price you pay isn’t the ticket price because sales tax is usually added. But as you’ll see most of us aren’t whining about that, we roll with it for the purpose of discussion.
unless I’m out of date I could fly to New Hampshire or one of the other zero sales tax states, or get a sweet deal from B&H photo in NYC but that’s got nothing to do with the price in a European Apple store, there’s nowhere in Europe like New Hampshire (there’s a meme right there!).
my forecast stands, when Apple recalculate retail prices sometime in September, October or November with new product launches as they traditionally do, they will have to increase prices in Europe. Part of this is down to material, energy and labour supply and costs in part pandemic and war driven - look at price of oil etc. but foreign exchange is massive factor too.
It looks like Apple are going to try and hide this behind spec bumps (iPhone 14 pro to have 256gb base sku for example, and that’s allegedly going to have a US price increase which guarantees a European price rise). They haven’t done a base storage bump in a while so it’s now a good time for them to make tweaks to base spec (and about time!).
but we have already had a price bump in Europe for the m2 MacBook Air - a stone cold fact - and it’s easy to see that prices increased MORE than the US dollar price increase percentage for the new Air.
and you therefore have to look again at the European prices for the MacBook Pro 13, thats purely down to FX rate. If Apple can keep the US price the same but increase the EU and uk price there’s nothing else to pin it on.
How does that affect the iPhone 14 non pro? Well, we can be fairly sure it’s going to come with a retread of the A15 cpu, possibly the version that originally went in the 13 pro with an extra GPU core. But will they increase the price on that?
in US dollar terms maybe not, in Europe? I think they might. if they do that, it will be partly down to foreign exchange calculations by Apple Just as they did in 2016 when they hiked the UK prices up by 20% purely due to brexit collapsing the value of the pound.
as for the obligatory Mac mini mention? I still think if Apple bring out the M2 mini it will have a higher starting spec and in Europe that will hide the price increase. And like the Air and now likely the iphone 14 non pro, they keep older kit around at the lower price.
so why wouldn’t there be a 8/256 M1 sku left over from the previous generation At the old price? i Think increasingly that’s how Apple will roll for the next 6 months at least.
that‘s why I think the next 2 mini SKUs up could be M2 (8/512 and 16/512) and they use the 10 core GPU variant (like in the MacBook Pro) and hide the price increase in there.
any folks wanting 24gb ram or more GPU cores than M1 will be buying the BTO upper sku M2 minis in my opinion, and that will raise the average selling price. More so for the poor souls who really wanted 3 thunderbolt ports or more than 2 monitors, they’ll have to find $2k for a Mac studio.
