Brexflation hits Lenovo's Phab2

Re: Meh

if nobody buys any more of the whatever it is being highlighted this week

Never mind what's highlighted - remember the names of the guilty companies, so that next time you're buying anything, this can be added to the criteria for choice.

Of course, by the time you've taken account of unethical practices, slavers,child labour, conflict minerals, tax dodging, Brexploitation, polluters, data loss or surveillance. and ownership by repressive governments you'll find that most forms of technology are off the menu.....

Re: How far back does Brexploitation go?

Perhaps I was completely wrong and it was Brexploitation 30 years ago too.

Probably. There's always been a big element of charging what any market will pay, and with reduced options to pop across the border (compared to say France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands) the UK is geographically set up to be ripped off. And (to an extent irrespective of the Euro) because France extends down to Spain and Italy, it becomes difficult to set regional prices in larger countries, or to try and have one price for Northern Europe and another for Southern Europe.

There's something else relating to this long term markup which is that UK distribution chains have persistently had higher costs than many apparently comparable economies. I recall some academic research that concluded the underlying cause was that property prices were higher. At first thought property seems like a small part of the cost build for flogging imported tat, but the thing about our high property costs (strongly linked to planning policy and population density) is that they of course affect everything - the land value for a shipping terminal, the costs of the domestic haulage company, the importer's own office costs, warehouse costs, the costs external professional services have to recover, the cost of the retailer's premises etc.

YMMV, but I think that property and an island constrained market are a big contributer to the longer term GB markup.

Re: I don't understand

Surely the cost in GBP (before taxes) should be the SAME as the cost in USD (before taxes), otherwise it would just be a case of the manufacturer ripping us off. Oh.

Err, no... I'll agree with the thrust of the article, but it does over simplifiy things.

If you do manufacture everything in the one factory, you have the shipping costs to the other countries.

If you don't, you'll have a different cost of manufacture. (Labour cost differences, tax differences (Not just on the VAT/sales tax) and local subsidies, for example)

Certification costs may be different for different countries, but that'll probably be put as part of the R&D budget for the product and shared across the different countries.

Also, some countries may need different versions of or extra components to comply with local regulations. (These are tablets and it shouldn't be the case but - for instance - mobile phones have different radio standards to deal with, set top boxes have different tuners standards and the PS3 had a hardware PS2 support in the states and a cheaper software emulation solution in Europe - because of the guaranteed life time of the chips for the US solution)

I've even heard of phones, for instance,sharing a schematic, the software and a case that have different PCB layouts depending on the site doing the final part of production. IIRC, this was all for the same sales region. (In which case if you got one from one site, it'd be fine - if you got one from another, it may be problematic due to the different layout - I don't know why you'd do that, though)

The difference of 97 euroes does seem to be "a bit high". (And we should be comparing the UK/Europe prices - similar or same regulations and certification processes, probably the same factories being used, shipping cost differences should be minimal)

These devices are all made in China and either flown in or come by boat in a container, probably to Rotterdam and/or Harwich.

There shouldn't really be more than 10% variation across Europe.

If you do try to buy the phab2 pro smartphone off one of the Lenovo European shops, they'll only let you enter that country as a shipping address.