Apple's pitch to the world

When I worked for Apple Canada in my early days at Apple, there were few times when Canadian customers did not question Apple's pricing.  Apple worked hard at making it difficult to buy outside of Canada and bring a system across the border.  Making the warranty country specific was the preferred tool in those days.

Still it always seemed that the Canadian consumer got the short end of the stick.

On the other side of the border I can remember when Apple systems destined for other countries ended up in the hands of unauthorized resellers and when some authorized resellers fed the same kind of market.

I will not pretend to be an expert on Apple's world pricing or Apple's plans for world markets.  For all I know Apple is winging it.

As someone who worked at Apple Canada, I saw Apple Canada tossed around like a hot potato at times.

It was part of the Americas sales group for a while, then it became part of Apple's international sales group only to return to the Apple Americas group.  We got lots of interesting tee shirts out of all the organizational changes.

In the early days of computers, governments would dangle large contracts in front of manufacturers in the hope of getting the commitment for a factory or some concession.  Apple pretty well did its own thing and ignored those requests to the best of my memory.

Recently I have gotten a couple of comments indicating that when it comes to world markets, Apple is acting a little arrogant and perhaps coming at world markets like they are suburbs of Cupertino.

A pure guess on my part would be that it is a little more of Steve' theory of computing.  We build them like we want to, if you want to buy what we make, you may have to make some adjustments in what you want.

I will admit up front that I really don't know what is happening, but it might be interesting to hear some international perspectives on how Apple is doing around the world at meeting customer needs.

Perhaps I will get enough comments to shed a little light on Apple's successes and failures around the world. 

Maybe success is similar to the Apple Stores.  The farther you are from Cupertino, the more likely it is that your sales will suffer. 

That story on Apple Store sales by state seems to have disappeared.  I wonder what happened to it?

I'll try to approve comments as quickly as possible but there are couple of times that I will be away from the computer on Saturday for a few hours.

Here's a link to Alex Patsay's post on Apple’s PR fiasco in Russia to get the discussion rolling.

Comments

[Biappi]

Fortunately here in Italy the situation is almost fine.

One thing that "hurts" is that many Apple devices' are priced with a 1:1 euro - dollar conversion, while currently an euro is 1,4 dollars worth.

I'm not an economist or a sales person, i don't know if transport or taxes can incide that much on the prices, some are arguing that Apple is charging non-US customers for localization and support costs, which is fine, but i think the US support costs can be pretty much comparable, so there should be no difference on this regard.

Localization is good, overall. The only missing thing is the Speech technology that works only for English voices, both recognition and synthesis.

Even in the support area things are good enough, we've got the 2-year warranty imposed by the EU.

So, for now we're left with the usual flame wars Mac vs PC. :)

[Bluejade]

Well, the situation in Canada is still much, much better than in places where Apple is represented by IMC. I am from the Czech Republic and the price, service and availability of Apple products is terrible. The situation is the same in majority of all the new members of EU. Even Greece and, until recently, Portugal is in the same pack. And that is just in Europe. Whether Apple doesn't have the will or the resources to move into new countries, or it is the fractured legislature of EU market, I don't know. What I know is that there sure is huge amount of people interested in Apples products. And it pains me that it seems like Apple doesn't care.

[kenny baird]

In my opinion, Apple has made 2 mistakes in the UK with regard to the iPhone. The first is the features the iPhone doesn't have, which are ubiquitous to other handset models. Doubtless this is a payoff for other hardware functionality. The second, and IMO more serious mistake is that it is unusual for Brits to have to pay for both a handset, and a high price mobile contract. Almost always, if you buy a mobile phone contract for £35 a month, you get the handset free. Apple has been very cagy with releaseing sales figures for iPhones in the UK - prohibiting Carphone Warehouse (a reseller) and 02 (the network) from releasing sales figures. Carphone Warehouse are said to have taken the apple contract soley to get people into their shops, to sell them something else. My guess is that this model (consumer pays handset + high mobile tarifs) has damaged sales considerably.

[Partners in Grime]

How come since the Canadian dollar has risen 30% the corresponding Apple prices haven't flinched downward one iota?