Apple Cutting International Pricing to Rebalance Currency Conversion Rates?
9 to 5 Mac reports that it is receiving word from some international third-party retailers that some of the new machines reportedly being released tomorrow are carrying reduced price tags compared to the current models.
According to the report, the price reductions seem to be adjusting for the fact that the U.S. dollar has fallen in value against many other world currencies over the past year, making Apple's pricing in those countries appear significantly higher than in the United States when considering exchange rates. Consequently, lower international pricing is not necessarily indicative of forthcoming price drops for the new hardware in the U.S.
We've been getting word from some international Apple retailers that not only are MacBook Airs, Minis and White MacBooks getting updated tomorrow, but they are also going to see modest-significant price drops in some countries we've polled. While we can't get into the specifics of where and how much, we can tell you some models are being reduced more than the equivalent of $100.
Along similar lines, MacStories put forth an interesting theory earlier today regarding Apple's iTunes Store downtime today, suggesting that the company might be trying to rebalance its country-by-country pricing tiers to account for the weakening U.S. dollar.
While there was no direct evidence for that suggestion and there has yet to be any sign of such changes, the report did note that some of the odd collection of countries most affected by Apple's downtime are among those furthest out of line on pricing compared to the U.S. In addition, Australian politicians reported last week that Apple would be responding to their earlier requests for information about pricing disparities "in mid July".
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