We recently featured a piece on Sony’s rather belated launch of the PS2 in Brazil a few months ago, and as if that wasn’t evidence enough of the ultra raw deal that Brazilian tech consumers get, then this piece from Gizmodo should leave little room for doubt…
Gizmodo compared prices of Macbooks in some of the territories where Apple officially operates (i.e. not through importers), and discovered that Brazil is unsurprisingly the most expensive region for buying such items. This certainly follows that general trend (it is not just Macbooks that cost more over there), but it does also reveal a slightly disproportionate mark-up, in that Apple products seem to be even more over-priced there than other electronics (pretty much double the US price in most cases).
While the justification for the excessive import tax levied on these goods is that it protects domestic production – the reality is that it just rips Brazilian consumers off, who have no domestic rival to an xBox or Macbook on offer for example. Commiserations to our Brazilian counterparts – here in the UK I’ll certainly think twice before complaining about tech prices again…
Dejan Levi