Apple online store now live in India with greedy and out of touch prices

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

It's not that different elsewhere... are we seriously acting surprised here?

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

By the way wtf is up with EU prices holy shit

 

lol

[GDRRiley]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

They have in the past. They sold machines at a loss for a while in the 90’s.  I remember a guy in the halls of my school trying to get other students to buy a share of apple stock for a dollar to keep them from going under.

right that was when they were about to die.

[tim0901]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

Yeah, God forbid Apple take the hit and lower their profit margin from 80% to something more reasonable to meet the needs of the market...

Which will result in people buying cheap iPhones/MacBooks in India and bringing them over to the US/Europe to sell for a profit. Regional pricing of products like these would be way too open to abuse. 

[DrMacintosh]

You can’t really blame Apple for having to pay India’s ridiculous import taxes. 

[justpoet]

Welcome to import tariffs 101.

[WkdPaul]

Quote

with greedy and out of touch prices

That part of the title is misleading.

 

People have been complaining about this for decades !

 

It's news that they now have a storefront in India, it's not news in regards to the upgrade price they're charging!

 

I remember G4 and G5 ridiculous memory prices back in the early 2000! I had friends in design at uni, and I was the go-to guy to get cheap upgrades, finding compatible Kingston sticks, and flashing compatible Nvidia cards with PPC compatible firmware...

 

It's also similar with China and their import taxes, I remember checking the price difference between China and Canada and it's ridiculous, especially when you converted the salary my wife was making at the time, VS the job she has here in Canada, simpler job, she's making almost 10 times what she was making in China (close to 60k vs 11k CAD). But it's not limited to Apple, it's the same with anything imported, like cars, any big brand electronics (non-Chinese brands, and yes it's made in China, but it gets taxes if it's for sale in China), clothes, jewelry, etc....

 

I remember being amazed at gas price and doing the conversion, and to give you guys an idea, it would be between 5x to 6x more expensive per liter / gallon in your area if we were in a similar situation as them.

Edited September 24, 2020 by wkdpaul

[TetraSky]

"Upgrade" prices of Apple products have always been ridiculously high and way above the current market value of the components in question.

This is for the Macbook Pro 16 inch in Canada :

 

Couldn't find the one in OP. No other macbook, imac or mac pro, had all those RAM options starting from 8GB for me. They are either 8GB and up to 32GB or start at 16GB and go to 64+GB.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

4 hours ago, TetraSky said:

"Upgrade" prices of Apple products have always been ridiculously high and way above the current market value of the components in question.

This is for the Macbook Pro 16 inch in Canada :

To be fair... honestly that isn't far off what competitors like Dell are charging:

 

 

For a MacBook Pro, this additional storage or memory would mean different DRAM and flash chips or a different number of them would have to be soldered onto the board. With Dell, as far as I can tell, they're just slapping more or different off the shelf components. One is certainly more complex than the other. 

 

Edit.-core 

The Dell Precision I was referencing, holy balls this is a pretty poorly spec'd machine for the same price as that base 16 inch 8-core MacBook Pro. 4 Core i5, only 256GB of NVMe storage, no video card (you're stuck with UHD 630 graphics for a mobile "workstation"), and a peasant 1080p display (how generous). Wait never mind, that was the sale price, this pathetic Dell has a starting price of 5 grand....

[RejZoR]

People blaming Apple and not realizing India has one of the most absurd "luxury" taxes in place making most of tech so expensive rest of the world can't even comprehend. It's not just Apple, has anyone seen complaints of Indians about gadgets in general? Laptops, graphic cards, processors? All of it has insane prices in India and it's not because companies are greedy. It's because of India's taxes and tariffs.

[TheCoverUp]

56 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

People blaming Apple and not realizing India has one of the most absurd "luxury" taxes in place making most of tech so expensive rest of the world can't even comprehend. It's not just Apple, has anyone seen complaints of Indians about gadgets in general? Laptops, graphic cards, processors? All of it has insane prices in India and it's not because companies are greedy. It's because of India's taxes and tariffs.

that's why India is leading development in stuff like hackintoshes and custom roms for  better ui on cheap phones...we can't afford it thus we use a "grey" market or other methods.... I have also seen people bring back lots of tech for themselves and thier family when a family member goes somewhere outside India..

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, Bad5ector said:

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Apple tax...

 

Aftermarket stuff like RAM has always been cheaper going third party when talking about Apple products.

That's not the apple tax, that's the import tax. Especially countries like Brazil which Apple has to build devices in the country to dodge the import tax, hence much more expensive devices.

 

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/gadgets/apple-iphones-get-costly-in-india-after-import-duty-hike/article30961563.ece

 

NEW DELHI, MARCH 02, 2020 11:34 IST

Quote

The price hike on iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max models along with iPhone 8 will be effective from Monday.

Apple has increased the price of some of its high-end iPhone models in India owing to an increase in customs duty on imported mobile phones and chargers along with social welfare surcharge in the Union Budget 2020.

 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

5 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

That part of the title is misleading.

 

People have been complaining about this for decades !

 

It's news that they now have a storefront in India, it's not news in regards to the upgrade price they're charging!

 

I remember G4 and G5 ridiculous memory prices back in the early 2000! I had friends in design at uni, and I was the go-to guy to get cheap upgrades, finding compatible Kingston sticks, and flashing compatible Nvidia cards with PPC compatible firmware...

 

It's also similar with China and their import taxes, I remember checking the price difference between China and Canada and it's ridiculous, especially when you converted the salary my wife was making at the time, VS the job she has here in Canada, simpler job, she's making almost 10 times what she was making in China (close to 60k vs 11k CAD). But it's not limited to Apple, it's the same with anything imported, like cars, any big brand electronics (non-Chinese brands, and yes it's made in China, but it gets taxes if it's for sale in China), clothes, jewelry, etc....

 

I remember being amazed at gas price and doing the conversion, and to give you guys an idea, it would be between 5x to 6x more expensive per liter / gallon in your area if we were in a similar situation as them.

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/apple-reportedly-seeking-approval-to-open-its-own-stores-in-india-791926
 

Quote

Its plans for India have been held back due to restrictions on foreign investment in the retail industry, which require single brand overseas retailers to buy close to a third of the goods sold at their stores from local producers.

Apple representatives held talks with Indian government officials about a relaxation of the 30 percent local-sourcing norms before filing the application, said a source familiar with the company's plans.

Their whole shtick to get permission from PM of India was becasue they had to sell it through 3rd party vendors and it'd mark by the prices when their market share in India is like 2%, they even shifted production of their phones to India last year to get the prices down of their products sold here 

what was the point of getting relaxation if they are only here for cheap labor? 

https://cfo.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/make-in-india-apple-may-shift-production-from-china-to-india/75675378

When a dollar is 74 Indian rupees, it's sounds exaggeration but that is a lot of money per dollar, now scale that to a 1400$ dollar for a 64GB stick mind you there is also 14+14% GST that'd easily make it more. you can buy a brand new car for the price of a 64 gb stick, so no, i'm not gonna apologize for the title, it is greedy and it is out of touch with its Indian customers. 

[Sauron]

7 hours ago, tim0901 said:

Which will result in people buying cheap iPhones/MacBooks in India and bringing them over to the US/Europe to sell for a profit.

Oh, suddenly import taxes don't matter? Also EU prices are equally egregious and should also be lower to begin with.

[Sauron]

12 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Their Government has been putting insane tariffs on practically everything coming into the country. Isn't it their own fault that even with protectionist policies that their own manufacturers can't meet the needs of their own people? 

If Apple's prices were typically reasonable I'd agree but as we've seen they're just as absurd elsewhere.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

34 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If Apple's prices were typically reasonable I'd agree but as we've seen they're just as absurd elsewhere.

You say that... but...

 

This powerhouse of a entry level "Business" laptop (even though it literally has no difference from an Inspiron practically) has a 1366x768 display, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD. At this point I don't even need to know what the CPU is and I already know this is a terrible machine in 2020. All for low starting price of $1,511 CAD?! 

 

I'm not even getting into iPhones which for the most part the sale price is as much as competing Galaxy S devices. Or the iPhone SE which is giving budget Android handsets a run for their money. Then you have the iMac Pro which Linus himself had said that for the specs you get, it's not far off for something similar you can build yourself minus the form factor. 

 

The base model iPad which... despite costing the same as my S5e... yea I don't even know why I choose the S5e now. This thing is just mediocre. It stumbles like it's drunk all of the time. Sometimes takes as long as 5 seconds to respond to a power button press. And being Android, it ain't going to get any crazy feature updates in its lifetime.   

 

Yea the average sale price is much higher than some would want to pay (I certainly wouldn't be able to afford one), but I gotta hand it to them, their devices still give you a ton of performance for your money. What they lack in the spec department at times is made up with how optimized their software is. And considering that they're doing all of the software in house and not just paying someone else for their OS, that extra cost is justified in my books. And with Apple Silicon macs on the horizon and how well those chips perform compared to Intel ones (reportedly), it's going to be much harder to justify saying "Apple products are overpriced". 

 

This is all in addition to the quality of life improvements they bake into their machines that people don't talk enough about. Stuff that even the Rossman admires. High. Res. Screens. On. Every. Machine. It's 2020, Windows OEMs, at least make 1080p the default screen resolution. What is this 1366x768 crap you're still giving people?

 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

-

"other products are also overpriced" is not an argument against Apple's products being overpriced. Furthermore we were using RAM prices as a specific example and those are outrageously absurd when compared to the price of almost any comparable standalone kit you can find on amazon.

[Mark Kaine]

8 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

To be fair... honestly that isn't far off what competitors like Dell are charging:

 

 

For a MacBook Pro, this additional storage or memory would mean different DRAM and flash chips or a different number of them would have to be soldered onto the board. With Dell, as far as I can tell, they're just slapping more or different off the shelf components. One is certainly more complex than the other. 

 

Edit.-core 

The Dell Precision I was referencing, holy balls this is a pretty poorly spec'd machine for the same price as that base 16 inch 8-core MacBook Pro. 4 Core i5, only 256GB of NVMe storage, no video card (you're stuck with UHD 630 graphics for a mobile "workstation"), and a peasant 1080p display (how generous). Wait never mind, that was the sale price, this pathetic Dell has a starting price of 5 grand....

 

 

this seems a really poor deal however (for outdated hw???)

 

 

this seems more "reasonable" for example.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-5750-Mobile-Workstation-Best/dp/B08F4Q8MFT?th=1&psc=1

 

you even get a"RTX 3000"  (whatever that is lol)

 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

 

this seems a really poor deal however (for outdated hw???)

 

 

this seems more "reasonable" for example.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-5750-Mobile-Workstation-Best/dp/B08F4Q8MFT?th=1&psc=1

 

you even get a"RTX 3000"  (whatever that is lol)

 

 

 

 

A standard complaint. “Apple hardware is overpriced for what you get.  Buy windows!”.  Same old same old for 30 years.

[Vector0102]

Import duties on electronics here (in India) start at 27% to 30%, so its not only Apple but any electronic gadget that's overpriced, but Chinese companies have been able to sell stuff for cheap because they have a local manufacturing base. Apple has some plants here too, but i guess margins are more important to them.

[WkdPaul]

6 hours ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

When a dollar is 74 Indian rupees, it's sounds exaggeration but that is a lot of money per dollar, now scale that to a 1400$ dollar for a 64GB stick mind you there is also 14+14% GST that'd easily make it more. you can buy a brand new car for the price of a 64 gb stick, so no, i'm not gonna apologize for the title, it is greedy and it is out of touch with its Indian customers. 

An yet, it's the SAME everywhere on the planet ... did you even read my reply?

 

China has the same issue, people are paid pennies in China, as I said my wife is an engineer, and she was getting 8000 USD per year, now imagine how much the people at the low-end of the salary scale are getting. Price are similar in China, an iPhone 11 Pro there is over $1300 USD, that's 2 months salary for an engineer, now imagine being the average person and having a salary of less than $300 USD per month, that's 4-5 months of salary just for an iPhone.

 

So again, you can spin it all you want, but it's an issue EVERYONE that isn't in the west is having, not just India, and being offended that you're being singled out is, IMO, pretty dismissive of the rest of the planet and a few billion people.

 

But then, it's also an issue that a very few people are going to have. If you're in India or China and need a Mac with 64GB of RAM, you'll have the ressources to get that (either it's your job, or, someone somewhere will be happy to charge you 20% of what Apple charges you and do it for you, like I did back in Uni, or you'll find a store that'll be happy to sell you a hackintosh).

 

 

In the words of Linus ; this isn't food or water, it's a computer component ; you'll survive without it. And if you're unhappy with their prices, there are other options that I pointed to above. Being offended by their prices won't change anything, it's been like this HERE in the west for decades, they haven't lowered thir prices here, so I'm guessing it'll be the same on your side.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

7 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

In the words of Linus ; this isn't food or water, it's a computer component ; you'll survive without it. And if you're unhappy with their prices, there are other options that I pointed to above. Being offended by their prices won't change anything, it's been like this HERE in the west for decades, they haven't lowered thir prices here, so I'm guessing it'll be the same on your side.

doesn't change the fact it is greedy and out of touch, i don't get what you are trying to say here? 

[WkdPaul]

1 minute ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

doesn't change the fact it is greedy and out of touch, i don't get what you are trying to say here? 

How is it greedy and out of touch when they're virtually charging the same price (in USD) to everyone???

 

I'm trying to provide perspective, you seem to have an emotional reaction to the story and you're avoiding the fact that 1) it's not a necessity 2) it's something that EVERYONE has been complaining about (seriously, just a quick look on this forum and you'll find pretty much everyone complains about Apple's prices, even Linus has mentioned it in videos) and 3) as I pointed out, it's not India specific.

 

Take a step back

[AlTech]

7 hours ago, Sauron said:

Oh, suddenly import taxes don't matter? Also EU prices are equally egregious and should also be lower to begin with.

EU prices include taxes though. US prices don’t.

[Sauron]

20 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

EU prices include taxes though. US prices don’t.

Ohh that's right, I always forget they do that in the US. Still, I'm comparing it to prices that also include taxes (RAM prices on Amazon) so the point stands.

[Bombastinator]

30 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

EU prices include taxes though. US prices don’t.

that sounds at best oversimplified.  “Taxes” is a catch all term.