Apple is at the core of a music rip-off
The Times UK writes,
Steve Jobs was in London this week promoting the wildly exciting but colossally overpriced iPhone – yours for £900 in the first year – with the phone alone costing £69 more than you would pay in the US. Apparently, the Apple boss believes that the costs of business are much higher in the UK (what do we do??), although this is not news.
A song on iTunes in Britain will set you back 79p, in Europe it is 99 cents, or 69p. In the US, it is 99 cents again, which translated into our money is 50p, although the difference with the States, but not Europe, is that sales tax is excluded and when that is factored in the price is more like 55p. And the pennies add up. Last year the value of music sold at retail in the UK was £1.75 billion, and digital ran at 6 per cent of the total. Let’s assume that Apple dominates digital sales and accounts for 4 per cent of the whole market: that represents roughly £43.9 million.
However, if Steve Jobs’s company had been charging American prices, it would have received only £30.6 million. It would be better still if the consumer had a choice, but Apple’s control over proprietary technology means that potentially cheaper rivals, such as HMV, cannot sell songs for download on to the market-leading Apple iPod.
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