“Apple Inc hiked prices of iPads and iPods in Japan on Friday, becoming the latest and highest-profile brand to join a growing list of foreign firms asking Japanese consumers to pay more as a weakening yen squeezes income,” Mari Saito, Tim Kelly, and Hideyuki Sano report for Reuters.
“The yen has fallen more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar since mid-November when then-opposition leader Shinzo Abe prescribed a dose of radical monetary easing to reverse years of sliding consumer prices as part of a deflation-fighting policy, dubbed ‘Abenomics,'” Saito, Kelly, and Sano report. “The Bank of Japan, under a new Abe-backed governor, in April promised to inject $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years to achieve 2 percent inflation in roughly two years.”
Saito, Kelly, and Sano report, “Apple, one of the most visible foreign companies in Japan, raised the price of iPads by up to 13,000 yen ($130) at its local stores. The 64 gigabyte iPad will now cost 69,800 yen, up from 58,800 yen a day ago, an Apple store employee said. The 128 gigabyte model will cost 79,800 yen compared with 66,800 yen. Apple also upped prices of its iPod music players by as much as 6,000 yen and its iPad Mini 8,000 yen… By raising prices amid a weakening yen, Apple joins luxury jewelry maker Tiffany & Co, which recently raised its prices even as sales jumped by 20 percent in Japan in local currency terms during the first quarter.”
Read more in the full article here.
BLN stop this crap. Just say what you want to say.
After the adjustment, the $799 (in the U.S.) iPad is now, after conversion to U.S. dollars at today’s market rates, $793.91 versus the prior price of $664.58.
These kinds of monetary fluctuations were part of the issue with the Mac gray market of two decades ago. International organizations (typically wholesalers) would buy Mac products at advantageous rates and then sell them back into the U.S. at 10% – 30% less than Apple’s list price — significantly undercutting Apple authorized resellers. Most people don’t know it but one of Jobs’ first moves was to do everything he could to kill the gray market.
Seems to be working.