South African Apple pricing comparison
By Tom Manners 12 August 2010 | Categories: newsThe prices we as South Africans pay for Apple products locally is often a hotly debated topic. Many consumers feel disgruntled towards official resellers due to what are commonly perceived to be exorbitant prices compared to those paid abroad.
For this reason, a number of consumers take their chances by ordering Apple products from unauthorised local resellers or importing them from other countries such as the United States and United Kingdom. These are known as ‘grey’ products.
Official Apple resellers for South Africa, Core Group, have warned consumers against this, stating that warranties on grey imports will not be valid in South Africa. This puts pressure on local consumers top purchase products from Core Group and its associated resellers in order to retain Apple’s warranty on costly products.
Nonetheless, the grey import trade in Apple goods is thriving locally, with numerous resellers emerging to offer their services to South African buyers at cheaper prices.
The question often asked is how much cheaper are grey importers when compared to South African resellers when buying Apple products? To address this we at TechSmart compiled a pricing comparison which includes some of the most popular Apple resellers in South Africa.
ZAStore (Core Group) | DigiCape | ecMac | Apple Cart | Kalahari | Take2 | |
iPod Nano 16 GB | R1999 | R1999 | R1999 | NA | R1958 | R1998 |
iPod Classic 160 GB | R2799 | R2799 | R2799 | R4035.25 | R2764 | R2798 |
Apple TV | R3199 | R3005 | R3199 | R3841 | R3501 | NA |
MacBook Pro 13" 2.4 GHz | R12999 | R12999 | R12699 | R18812 | R15880 | NA |
MacBook Air 1.86 GHz | R15999 | R15999 | R15599 | R18305 | R22202 | NA |
iMac 27" Core i5 2.8GHz | R22999 | R22999 | R22999 | NA | R25659 | NA |
As one can see from the comparison, Core Group’s ZA Store online platform is not particularly competitive across the board. Nonetheless it should be noted that among all the resellers the pricing is relatively neck and neck, particularly within the higher end market.
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