Guys at Pingdom has written an interesting comparison on Apple pricing between US, Europe and Australia. Like the Big Mac Index, their “Apple Price Index” used the price of Apple products to calculate the purchasing power parity of nations.

How we compared the prices

We looked at the prices for 17 Apple hardware products (computers) as well as the price of Mac OS X and Office 2008 for Mac.

The comparison is between US, Europe (average prices from Sweden, UK, Spain, Germany and France) and Australia. As a Swedish company, Pingdom quickly found out how much they have over-paid for their beloved Macs and iPods. However, I guess the only reason I can think of that they have included Australia in comparison is that they can feel good about themselves.

We thought we had it bad here in Sweden, but when we looked at the prices for Macs in Australia we couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for them.

Australians pay a whopping 26.5% more on average for their Macs compared to Americans. For a thousand-dollar product, that is an additional $265 that an Australian would have to pay compared to an American. And that’s US dollars, not Australian.

Ouch.

Pingdom tried to answer the question “why such a big difference?” I don’t think there’s anything satisfactory except accepting the fact that the Australian market is much smaller than US or Europe. Therefore when you factor in the infrastructure cost (store, personnel, warehouse, etc) there is a higher overhead selling Mac in Australia than in US. Fortunately you can still buy from US using services such as PriceUSA — you pay the US price + shipping to Australia + fee for PriceUSA + tax if applicable.

Recent flux in AUD-USD currency exchange can also contribute to the reason why us Aussies are paying so much for Apple products. $1 AUD was exchanging $0.985 USD merely 5 weeks ago, but now it has fallen to $0.87 USD — 12% drop! Definitely not looking forward to see rises in the coming weeks as retailers “adjusts” their prices.

Finally — there are some clear mistakes in Pingdom’s prices. From the Excel file included, 40GB Apple TV was supposed to be AUD $449. However when you actually go to Apple Australia’s online store, $449 is the price for the 160GB version. 40GB is only AUD $329! Maybe Apple Australia has dropped the price by $120 over the last few days?

Anyway. The conclusion — Aussies are being ripped off, which is one of the reasons why OzBargain exists.