KEY POINTS:
Oh to have the bargaining power being a member of the European Union allows. The 27-country political and economic union has taken many a technology company to task with its multinational team of lawyers whenever it gets a sniff of anti-competitive behaviour.
Most famously, there's been the European Union v. Microsoft antitrust case which was only recently settled, the result being a 777 million euro for the software maker.
Now the EU has dealt to,Apple agreeing to drop an anti-trust case against the company because it has agreed to charge the same price for downloads from its iTunes music store across the EU.
Apple has been charging about nine cents more for iTunes songs downloaded in Britain over songs downloaded from iTunes stores in the rest of Europe and claims more expensive licensing deals with record labels in the UK explains the difference.
Now Apple plans to play hardball with its music suppliers.
"Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the UK with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months," the company said .
Over here in New Zealand, Apple charges $1.79 per track or on average $17.99 for a new album, which given the exchange rate compares reasonably well to our nearest neighbour, Australia where they pay $1.69 per track and $16.99 for an album.
But compare the pricing to that of the US iTunes store and it becomes obviously what a premium we pay for music here!
At 99c per track at the US iTunes store, that equates to NZ$1.26. The Americans pay more than 50c less per track than we pay. An album generally costs US$9.99 or $12.70 in our money. The Europeans would be ready to riot at that type of price premium!
There's not much we can do down here at the bottom of the world to push for price parity with the rest of the world, though lobbying in conjunction with Australia would help.
It's obvious that it's going to cost more for physical goods to be shipped here, though electronics makers and their distributors continue to slap unreasonable mark-up prices on many goods. Online, the price should be the same - it should cost Apple no more to deliver songs through iTunes New Zealand than it does iTunes US.
Apple would argue that the price differences are down to the music industry. But the whole argument is about to be made irrelevant anyway as the industry changes its business model to combat the impact of free downloads. As points out here Aardvark, there's no reason why a paid-for music download service shouldn't have a subscription model just like pay TV or internet access and indeed there are some services already operating on that model. The question is, how many consumers would be willing to pay $5 or $10 a month for an all-you-can-eat music service and then how does the music industry divvy up the proceeds?
CDMA gets political
Meanwhile, Australians are still to find out for sure whether the Government will allow Telstra to go ahead with its plans to switch off its at the end of January CDMA network.
The Government wants to be sure Telstra's replacement NextG network has enough coverage, especially in rural areas to fill the void left by the CDMA switch-off. For Telecom customers here who roam to Australia, it means there may be more time available to decide on making the switch to a worldmode CDMA handset. The longer that decision can be delayed the better as the range of worldmode handsets is gradually increasing.
The Government, which has had people driving all over Australia to measure NextG coverage, will make a call on the switch-off date by January 21.
CES digested
Finally, the consensus seems to be that the annual Consumer Electronics Show has become bigger than ever, but is on the wane as a showcase of cutting-edge new technology.
Personally, I prefer the Ceatec show held in Tokyo. It's very Japan-centric, but shows off some of the innovative stuff coming out of the labs of the Japanese electronics makers. It's more hardcore product design than the glitz and glamour of CES, but what we want to see at the end of the day is cutting-edge new technology.
Anyway, here's CNet's top products from CES this year - Philips power-efficient Eco TV was the overall winner.
