24 January 2007
Vista Pricing Unfair
If you do a price comparison of Windows Vista worldwide, you will notice a huge difference in prices.
To do the best comparison, I used Amazon to keep it within one retailer. Below are the prices of Windows Vista Ultimate for different countries with the cost in USD (current estimates)
US - 379.99 USD (sale price) - 399.00 USD
Germany/Austria - EUR 549.00 - 711.3942 USD
Canada - 499 Canadian Dollar - 424.57245 USD
Japan - 46,100 yen - 379.361422 USD
Currently both the UK and France are not offering Vista Ultimate on pre-order. Amazon's UK site was asked by Microsoft to stop offering the pre-order. Comparisons done by others though lists the UK price as about £157 (310.05 USD) more than the US price. I will list the actual comparison when Amazon begins offering it again.
The question that arises here is why does the software cost so much more for some countries. I can understand a slight difference because of translation costs or different taxes. But taking Germany as an example about $310 is a large difference. Also translation costs can be ruled out as Japan has a similar price to the US while translating English to Japanese is more complicated than English to German. Canada seems to have a fair increase and can be assumed to be associated with tariffs. It seems that some countries are being ripped off in the pricing paying nearly double for the same software. Those countries seem to fall inside of Europe so far although Australia has reported a higher price as well also several hundred USD higher.
To do the best comparison, I used Amazon to keep it within one retailer. Below are the prices of Windows Vista Ultimate for different countries with the cost in USD (current estimates)
US - 379.99 USD (sale price) - 399.00 USD
Germany/Austria - EUR 549.00 - 711.3942 USD
Canada - 499 Canadian Dollar - 424.57245 USD
Japan - 46,100 yen - 379.361422 USD
Currently both the UK and France are not offering Vista Ultimate on pre-order. Amazon's UK site was asked by Microsoft to stop offering the pre-order. Comparisons done by others though lists the UK price as about £157 (310.05 USD) more than the US price. I will list the actual comparison when Amazon begins offering it again.
The question that arises here is why does the software cost so much more for some countries. I can understand a slight difference because of translation costs or different taxes. But taking Germany as an example about $310 is a large difference. Also translation costs can be ruled out as Japan has a similar price to the US while translating English to Japanese is more complicated than English to German. Canada seems to have a fair increase and can be assumed to be associated with tariffs. It seems that some countries are being ripped off in the pricing paying nearly double for the same software. Those countries seem to fall inside of Europe so far although Australia has reported a higher price as well also several hundred USD higher.
Labels: microsoft, vista, windows
