By Graham K. Rogers

Earlier today, I was sent a link to an article on MacNews by a reader. This reports on the findings of Idealo.co.uk who compared prices on the Apple online stores round the world. This region has the best and the worst.

The US and the Singapore stores are considered to offer the best deals on Apple prices, After taking into account each country's GDP per capita at PPP (my italics). And the worst? "The online Apple stores of Brazil, the Czech Republic and Thailand have the most expensive prices in the entire world, even though their economies rank as three of the poorest," while Malaysia's store has the cheapest prices in the world.

There was no indication in the report as to how much more expensive or cheap these prices were.

Consider the implications for users here where prices have always been considered high ever since the days when there was only one distributor. Now there are three or four (depending on how you define this), but Apple prices are set by the company so the online store and the iStudio outlets all charge the same. Prices include VAT at 7%.

The only differences are that you have to fetch the purchases from iStudio while the online store has a deliver for free arrangement for anything over 2,000 baht (and that includes a combination of items); and that it is also quicker if users want to make special orders, such as a change in drive specification or RAM as the iStudio may take 3 weeks; but it is only 1 week from the online store, putting the iStudio concession holders at a disadvantage.

I took the time to look at the data on the Idealo site and it makes interesting reading. All the countries in the region are shown with their price/cheapness ranking, Malaysia (1), Singapore (5), Indonesia (8), Philippines (13), Vietnam (14) and Thailand (35); Highest GDP - Singapore (2), Malaysia (30), Thailand (33), Indonesia (35), Philippines (36) and Vietnam (37); and Best Deal - Singapore (1), Malaysia (13), Indonesia (21), Philippines (28), Vietnam (32) and Thailand (36).

It is not good to see Thailand at the bottom of any of these tables.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.