With the pound sterling now getting you $2 or so for the first time in 15 years (though I'm stuffed if I can find a site offering a chart of the sterling/dollar exchange going back more than five), the focus is coming even more intensely on the prices being charged by American software companies for the products they sell here in the UK and Europe.
Which means Adobe, notably, which has just launched its Creative Suite 3 range. Amanwithapencil takes Adobe to task, and it has to be said that Adobe doesn't come out well from it. CS3 works out significantly more expensive in the UK and Europe than the US:
In the three European countries examined, the price of Apple's software is between 6% and 23% higher than that in the US.
Adobe's software, however, is between 25% and 106% more expensive in Europe than in the US (based on the limited number of products and countries analysed.) Once again, these prices are exclusive of sales tax, so they represent a direct hit on the customer levied by Adobe.
(It then goes on to see whether Apple might be using its hardware to subsidise its software costs. The conclusion: no, since Apple gear has the same markup.)
But come on, says Adobe, we have to allow for all these fancy-schmancy languages that people use in Europe. Or as it puts it in responses to customers who have also complained:
The price of software in EMEA (europe-middle east-africa) reflects both the additional expense to develop and test Adobe's applications for local markets and operating systems, as well as for the delivery of complimentary Warranty support. Adobe's complimentary Warranty support covers product installation and defect issues for the life of the current version of Adobe's desktop applications.
The rebuttal from amanwithapencil:
In my 'International English' install of the CS2 suite, I find that 'colour', 'grey', and 'stylise' are spelled 'color', 'gray', and 'stylize'. If Adobe have made no effort to change spelling (a relatively minor issue, but the only localisation change needed to adapt a US product for the UK that I'm aware of), then what, exactly, additional development and testing has been required?
Adobe told the British Journal of Photography that
Unlike the economies of scale achieved in the large homogenous US market, the EU has 10 major languages, and four major currencies. The costs of doing business in European markets are significantly higher per unit of revenue than in the US.
The rebuttal from amanwithapencil:
How, then, does Adobe justify the fact that prices in Australia are 31% higher than the US? Australia is a homogenous market. You can only purchase English language software from Adobe's Australian online store, and can only pay in A$. One language, one currency, 31% mark-up.
(Amanwithapencil is also known as Nigel Moore, a web designer and coder. And you can guess that he's not based in the US.)
We've written on Microsoft's pricing in December, but we'd certainly be interested in any other tightly-argued comparisons of pricing between UK and US products. Or, indeed, of price differences for UK products that are sold in the US. What are Autonomy's licensing deals like, for example?
