@attila: aren't prices in europe generally higher than in US? (ergo the infrastructure, payscale, and everything else that has to do with distribution costs in europe is higher)

Prices in Europe is generally higher than in the USA. It doesn't really only translate to infrastructure though, if you buy Photoshop from adobe.com, the price will adjust to the local pain limit. In Scandinavia, it's way, way more expensive to download photoshop from the same server. Yet buy something from eBay.com and despite high shipping costs and VAT, it may still be much cheaper.

On the other hand, buy a camera from eBay USA and chances are you'd be better off buying it locally. So it's different for different niches.

Preliminary injunction - yes, you can go to T-Mobile and tell them to unlock your iphone, but that's a real hassle. And no, that doesn't mean that Apple has to sell the iphone anywhere else except with T-Mobile.

Yes, but some companies really count on people not checking out prices in other countries (or let us europeans bend over to get it):

Adobe InDesign:

US - US-$ 699,-
DE - EUR 1010,- (incl. VAT), EUR 849,- excl. VAT

EUR 849,- is US-$ 1.214,-

And no, I don't think that life is that much more expensive over here

Adobe and a lot of the software companies get away with charging those prices because they say it's due to the multiple languages it has to be translated to.

Apple used to say because of the multiple adapters and/or power supplies.

But honestly... I thought it was just another get more money. That is until I hit up Japan. If you know where to look, and I don't mean grey market... we're getting screwed a bit too in the US on a lot of our electronics.

Regardless... the price for the N900 isn't a concern for me in this iteration. It seems "fair" enough. And the hardware, for what you're paying for... is mighty capable.

I just doubt it will have more than one killer feature that will convince me to buy into it. Especially with the non-committal stance of Harmattan on it (it should go onto it easily since the next few devices are rumored to have OMAP3 cpus in them anyway)...

Depends on the what industry are you talking about. Consumer electronics and software are areas where the markup is quite significant, and more importantly quite uniform across Europe (compared, to, say food or housing, which is more closely related to average income). To put it another way, for the (local) price of a dozen or so high-end iMacs I can buy a small seaside house (!) on the Adriatic.

hi everyone!

regarding the price differences between the USA and european states:
in europe, all prices _have_ to include the VAT, which spans from 15-20%. In the US there is no such obligation, so usually you will see the untaxed prices in the ads.

so, a device which retails in europe at 600€ means 500€ without taxes, which is about 700USD.

Well, we'll have to ask the US folks if the BH703 headset is as bad as to be worth paying extra 65$ NOT to get it

+1
here in France, it's 649€, which means (with our 19.6% VAT) 542.64€ + taxes.
That's about $777 right now, so that means I get to pay over $125 more than the US customers, plus the VAT. Just to get my regional keyboard layout printed on the HW keyboard. Doesn't that sound silly ?

I'm starting to consider what I already did for the N810, getting it on eBay from a US seller.

be careful with that, if you're unlucky and customs open your package (as they occasionally do) you might have to pay even more than the VAT.