Most people don’t know this but Apple as a company does not exist in South Africa. They are actually sold under license by a company called Core here in sunny SA.
There’s always been a substantial price differential between Apple products in the US compared to the price in South Africa but sure, I understand that there are costs involved in shipping and taxes and what not. For many years Core’s pricing has been draconian at best but I’d say in the past two years they’ve made an about turn and put in a lot of effort to work their pricing out and make it a bit more bearable to buy Apple products in South Africa. Last time I checked you could get a Mac Mini for just over five grand; a reasonable price for the size and power of the machine. You were always going to pay a price premium over a normal PC but that premium has always been relatively stomach-able.
This all seems to have changed recently. One of my PC’s is totally bust and I figured since it’s used as an internet/office machine a Mac Mini would be a nice change. So I booted up the Apple South Africa online store and was shocked to see the pricing of the Mini. The cheapest one is R6500! This is more than a grand more than it was a few weeks ago when I looked at something else on the site.
R6500 for a 1.83Ghz core 2 duo with an 80 gig hard drive and a gig of ram! I’m sorry, that’s daylight robbery. If I were to go to an expensive PC retailer and buy a similarly spec’d Windows PC I would spend at the most three grand. The machine doesn’t even have a DVD writer! How cheap is that!
Now I understand that the exchange rate has gone down and the cost of importing products is higher but surely this is going to turn off people from buying the product? I guess Core never really the message when it came to the demand for Apple products in South Africa and instead decided to price the product out of the average persons price range. The best irony for me is that this isn’t a new product so it’s likely they’ve had it in their store rooms for months and paid for it when the rand/dollar exchange rate was bearable and are just ripping people off now.
Good job Core, you’ve made obsolete hardware prohibitively expensive so no one can buy it. Great success!
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Interesting article, thanks for posting the review!
Thanks Chris, Just like to keep people in the know when the customer is getting ripped off.
Couldn’t agree more, though no so sure about the recent price drops. Core also imports the Nintendo Wii. Not the greatest pricing on that front either.
If you are looking for a Mac, try get hold of Dion Wired. Was in the Gateway branch last week and they had some older models going for a discounted price. The 24″ models were absolutely stunning – though sadly those weren’t in the R5000 price range
The Wii is going to take some serious hits in SA now that the Xbox arcade is cheaper.
You know, at the end of the day I know I will pay more for an Apple but I really just hate getting ripped off.
Will call Dion tomorrow, hopefully they have something to cast off to me.
I’m not defending Core’s pricing, and I do believe that Macs cost more here than offshore (I’ve bought Apple computers in London, NY and Tokyo, and they have always been cheaper).
But the Rand really has gone to hell.. Over R8 to the $ is nothing to be sneezed at
Tim, firstly thank you for your comment. Secondly I totally agree with you about the Rand going to hell and that explaining price increases but even with a weaker rand (at the exchange rate the Macbook Air translates directly to R14468) while in South Africa it costs R18000.
Now Core certainly are not paying retail prices for their stock so it probably costs a fair amount less but factor in shipping them it probably comes to the equivalent dollar price in rands.
So somewhere, someone is getting very rich off expensive hardware.