Oz higher tech prices blamed on retailers

The City Weekly states.

But one member of parliament describes that as a “convenient excuse” that did not adequately explain why Australians pay up to 80% more than Americans for the same item.

Eastern Riverina Chronicles says that the Labour MP Ed Husic said at a federal parliamentary committee hearing into IT pricing that the industry was using its retail partners as “bureaucratic cover”.

Husic said the real driver of higher price tags was wholesale prices set by the big global vendors.

“What it actually comes down to is the fact that your members ... can charge whatever they want here because of the lack of purchasing power that exists in Australia compared with a market such as the US,” he said.

In a study of more than 200 prices, the consumer group Choice identified “an approximate 50 % price difference between what Australians and US consumers pay for more or less identical products”, such as music downloads, games, software and computer hardware, The Sydney Morning Herald writes.

But the peak body for the technology companies, the Australian Information Industry Association, said price disparity was “clearly not technology-industry specific”, pointing to the latest Big Mac index compiled by The Economist, which “shows a difference of 426 % between the lowest price of $1.89 in India versus the highest of $8.06 in Switzerland”.

The association's chief executive, Suzanne Campbell, says the cost of doing business in Australia was higher. She said significant factors were “supply chain and channel costs”.