Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/07/14/itunes_price_rise/

Brits lose out as iTunes prices jump

Aussies do well

By Tony Smith

Posted in Personal Tech, 14th July 2011 08:40 GMT

Most stories covering Apple's international price rises have focused on the base price - up from 59p to 69p in the UK, a rise of 16 per cent or so - the increase is higher elsewhere.

Case in point: readers buying comics through iPad apps and who used to pay around £1.19 per issue will now pay £1.49 - a 25 per cent price rise.

As one pundit put it on Twitter last night: "That's some rate of inflation, Apple."

Other rise are more modest. An app costing £4.99 yesterday now costs £5.49, a rise of just over ten per cent.

The price changes applies to Apple app stores - and in-app purchases - made outside the US, and is said to have followed complaints from Australians that they were paying too much, a result of the increasing strength of the Aussie dollar.

AUD prices were pegged at an old exchange rate.

Indeed, Australians have done well: prices are down from AUD 1.19 to AUD 0.99.

Brit prices are up even though the US dollar recently dipped against sterling. The US price of $0.99 equates to £0.62, by the current exchange rate.

$1.99, a typical in-app purchase price, is £1.24, not the £1.49 Apple is now applying.

Rip-off Britain? Rip-off Cupertino, more like. ®