Adobe Bows To Pressure and Cuts Australian Prices 159
An anonymous reader writes "Software giant Adobe has bowed to public pressure and slashed the price of some of its products for Australian customers a day after being ordered to front a parliamentary committee hearing to explain its excessive charges."
I'm Surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm really surprised that they "bowed to pressure". When last I checked, Australian companies could set the price of their goods as they choose and parliamentary testimony had as much authority as the dog and pony shows of the U.S. congress.
The whole thing seems odd to me.
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why so high? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they thought they could get away with it. For a long time they were right.
good strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About time! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what added protections does Steam grant to a European that aren't granted to an American?
Re:Problem for companies competing internationally (Score:4, Insightful)
Software should be sold as a commodity not licensed.
If country A and country B both had furniture business, and exporter Z arbitrarily sold wood at twice the price to country A, in the medium term the price of wood in country A would approach the cost of country B's cheap wood plus trucking wood from B to A, no huge deal.
But if you licensed fine grain furniture grade oak by the individual plank and certain planks could only be used in certain countries... this is the software license problem...
Re:About darn time (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see what these compulsive updaters think they can do with CS6 that they could not do with CS2.
How about run on newer operating systems? How about open files created by someone else who uses CS6, with all effects in place?
95% of users of Photoshop do the same fucking things with the current version that they did with it in 1998.
But they don't run it on Windows 98.
Re:About time! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a taxation issue - it's an extortion issue. This is pure and simple that (predominantly) American companies double, triple and sometimes a lot more than that the price of digital downloads when destination ==
Considering they're all assembled in China, which is closer to Australia, I don't buy that's it's a freight cost, either. It's long been known that IT companies just jack up the price massively if they're dealing with Australia because we've allowed ourselves to become accustomed to it.
Re:Why so high? (Score:3, Insightful)
The devaluation of the dollar has nothing to do with empire collapse and everything to do with fiscal policy by the Fed, they're trying to prime the pump by dumping ridiculous amounts of money into the system (both through zero percent interest rates and through their t-bill and other bond purchasing programs). This will necessarily devalue the USD, which is actually a good thing when you're trying to raise employment and exports (not so good if you're a saver, but there aren't that many of those in the US anyways).
Re:Australia and software are not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American, I'm proud of the fact that most prices here are negotiable. Sure, it means a little more work to buy the thing you want at a reasonable price. And honestly, it intimidates a lot of people who were raised to be non-confrontational. Whatever, they can pay the full asking price if that's what they want.
You're right, it is cultural. There's a downside to having a low cost of living, however. You still hear just about everyone in the U.S. complain about the price of just about everything. Even while the poorest of our poor still have a higher quality of life than most of the rest of the world. Even if you're homeless and don't have a dime to your name, most cities have shelters where you can sleep and eat for free. (And even these cost too much to run because we effectively have _no_ public mental health treatment system, which is a damn shame. But that's a topic for another day.)
Because luxury goods are so cheap (big houses, big cars, big computers, loads of cheap entertainment), most of the middle class spends money like they're millionaires. As a result they live paycheck to paycheck and don't save enough for retirement. And then they get outraged that social security is paying out less and less because hey, how are they going to afford to retire now that companies don't do pensions anymore? I'm looking out over the parking lot of the corporate building next door and about 10% of the cars are gas-guzzling sports cars while 40% of the cars are SUVs and pickup trucks. I'm betting almost none carpool. These people are burning up huge chunks of their paycheck before they even get it.
Over the past few years, I've been listening to political news on the radio and it floors me how many otherwise normal, sane people seem to think that it's the government's job to provide them with stable employment and retirement. I'm all for social welfare progams that help the poor, but for christ sake, the middle class needs to wake the fuck up and start spending less while saving more. Instead of asking the government to knock on their door and give them even more money to waste.
Re:Australia and software are not unique (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's another thing that I noticed when I came to the US: people have an enormous amount of stuff in their enormous (by UK standards) houses. Even after 22 years in the US, I still can't get over how much stuff is available, and how little it costs. Don't get me wrong: I like stuff. But it's overwhelming how much stuff there is.
You highlight a real US problem, though: people not understanding the time value of money. It's not taught in the schools, AFAIK. This leads to living on credit (which is astonishingly expensive, if, like most people, you use credit cards) and living for "now" versus "the rest of your life". Try explaining to the average person that waiting a few months to save for something saves you 10-80% of the long-term cost (depending on how indebted you are). The classic symptom of this: a car dealer asking you what monthly payment you're looking for when you walk onto the lot. And there are insidious money-sucking prices in the US, too: what the average home spends on healthcare, mobile voice/data and cable/satellite is just incredible. And every marketing genius has figured out the recurring revenue model and many households fall for it, e.g. Sirius/XM for your car(s).