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I recently posted about a price comparison between European Apple Stores, and showing – or at least trying to show – how much Apple is gaining by selling overseas.

I will make use of the same tax rate estimated as computed in that article. Based on this assumption, I tried to discover how much is the gain for three Apple main products: the new Apple TV, the new Mac Mini and the MacBook.

This is what I got:

Margin gain for Apple TV, Mac Mini and MacBook

As you can see, for the Apple TV we are missing prices for the Italian, the Spanish and the Swiss Apple Store, where as of today this product is still not available. I shall update this post when Apple updates these stores.

If my estimation was correct, you could be very surprised of the results. Not so much for the MacBook, for which Apple is gaining about +5,56%, with a max gain of +10,66% (in Switzerland) and a minimum loss of -0,29% (in France). Surely we all are surprised for the other two products. Apparently Apple has a mean +18,85% in revenues for the Mac Mini and a mean +25,32% for the Apple TV.

The prices that kill the consumers

But still now, we are talking about net prices, since I am considering a lower prices (the real one minus the taxes). Should we look at the very real price we would get a very different situation. An Apple TV in Europe costs about +54,7% more than in the US, while a Mac Mini costs “just” +45,5% more.

I have been an Apple fan for 5 years now. But think about this: I always wanted a Mac Mini. Just when I was about to buy one of these pieces of art, Apple updated the Store. The previous product was priced no more than € 500, but the last one costs a minimum of € 799. + € 300 more. How can one justify this? I think that none could. So, my lounge is still missing a good Apple-made media center. And the situation won’t change unless Apple’s price policy changes. Some of you has made the same reasoning, haven’t you?

The Apple TV, a stranger in a strange land

The Apple TV has never had the success Apple hoped. They admitted it. In the US the Apple TV is still not taking off, nor it will in Europe, for sure. If we consider that Europe misses a lot of online media services that the US gave birth to (just think about Netflix or Hulu), this product cannot penetrate the market. Not with this price policy. If Apple wants to gain market shares in Europe, something has to change.

And guess what?

In one of my next posts I will complete this overview with the latest beasts from Apple: the MacBook Pro family and the new Mac Pro.