Posted on 05/11/2010 11:15:53 PM PDT by Swordmaker
WHAT have the following places got in common?
America, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Vietnam.
Clearly the size of the market is not the determinant. China and Russia don’t appear, but Luxembourg does. It is not about prosperity: Iceland—which, believe it or not, is still one of the richer countries in the world—is out, whereas Vietnam is in. Political freedom or the rule of law are not the binding factors. The Philippines and Thailand are on the list, whereas impeccable democracies such as Slovenia are not.
Perhaps the list comprises the target markets of some tiresome company from “old Europe” that has not noticed that the Berlin Wall has come down and that the division of Europe at Yalta into consumer-citizens in a rich, free west and captive east is long out of date.
But no, the list comes from a company that prides itself on being an icon of über-cool internationalism, with a post-modern disdain for clunky convention and tiresome rules. It is from the Apple Store, where eager customers from all over the world end up in the hope of buying an iPad, or a humble $25 gift card.
First-time visitors are assumed to be from America. If you come from one of the countries listed above, you can switch. But if not, you are out of luck. No matter if your country is in the European Union, NATO and the OECD. For Apple, the eastern half of Europe is still both terra incognita and non desiderata.
Still, you can always buy your Apple hardware from an authorised reseller. The real irritation comes when you want to buy electrons, not atoms. Sign up for an iTunes account, and the opening windows offer a glimmer of hope:
Not just two kinds of Portuguese, but Polish and Russian too, as well as the mysterious “Spanish (International Sort)”. It looks fine. So—at first sight—does the iTunes store, which offers a tempting array of countries:
But some are more equal than others. Visitors from Finland, for example, are presented with a full array of music. But register with an address in Estonia, just half an hour away by plane, and you get only a list, admittedly rich, of games, gimmicks and lectures. Films and music are out of bounds.
This approach annoys a lot of people. One organisation in Poland has been berating Apple for its approach to the biggest and most advanced market in eastern Europe. It is now celebrating a partial victory (Apple has agreed to open up its distribution market). But even in Poland, the company’s offering is nothing like what you get across the border in Germany. Other countries in the region have yet to see any improvement at all.
One of those most irked by the company's approach is the iPhone-toting president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a loyal customer since 1982, when he bought an Apple IIe. Estonia, he notes, is one of the most wired countries on earth. Tallinn is the centre of NATO’s cyber-warfare research, and Estonians invented another icon of internet cool: Skype. Skype’s director of new products, Sten Tamkivi, has an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac at home. He describes the Apple rule as “a weird relic of commercial east-west segregation inside what is otherwise known as the European Union".
Why doesn’t Apple, a company so irritatingly up to date in its products and marketing, update its worldview when it comes to sales? Apple’s global headquarters did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman in Britain promised to investigate. When we get an answer, we’ll post it here.
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b/c that Kryllic crap just ain’t worth it...
Aaarrrrgghhh!!!
If a company has been doing business in a country for years, then it already knows how to comply with most of those laws. If a country is a major market, then it's worth the company's while to hire local attorneys to figure out how to navigate those laws. But if the company is relatively new to the country, and the country isn't a major market, then it's just not worth the legal risk. If Steve Jobs gives a speech in Poland, Apple doesn't want him arrested by some local prosecutor from Bad Plotzenberg because the iTunes store broke the law by conducting business on Smigus Dyngus Day.
Well? What is it then? Please enlighten us. I am sure the President of Estonia would love to hear your answer.
My question is: Why can’t I buy the same awesome X-Japan music from iTunes in the States than I can find but not buy from iTunes Japan?!
Well? What is it then? Please enlighten us. I am sure the President of Estonia would love to hear your answer.
The President of Estonia doesn't have to be given the answer... LOL ... he already knows...
He may be irked, but that doesn't mean he doesn't already know the answer. And that doesn't mean that he's irked at Apple either, because of the reason that he already knows ... :-)
The article is kinda stupid coming from The Economist, because they already know, too... but they don't want to "let on" in the article. They've got an agenda of some sort by writing the article, which really has nothing to do with Apple, but more about highlighting "the problem" ...
Your first clue, in that article, and what it's "really about" -- is ...
Films and music are out of bounds.
But, then it shifts the real reason over to Apple, probably because they knew if they did that in the article, it would get a lot of attention. If they addressed it from the standpoint of the "real problem" -- no one would read the article ... LOL ...
Why doesn’t Apple, a company so irritatingly up to date in its products and marketing, update its worldview when it comes to sales?
You'll note that they just "barely" touch on the "problem" (one sentence of seven words) and next, they barely touch on the real reason (barely disguised in another short sentence)....
Skype’s director of new products, Sten Tamkivi, has an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac at home. He describes the Apple rule as “a weird relic of commercial east-west segregation inside what is otherwise known as the European Union".
Note that the "Skype director" doesn't describe this as a problem of "the Apple rule" but the writer of the article does. The Skype director knows what the problem is ... and that's why he's only partially quoted in the article. The Skype director knows the problem is "a weird relic of commercial east-west segregation inside ... the European Union" by way of those companies who deal in "films and music" (from the sentence up above) ...
You would think that writers for such a publication as The Economist would write an article that would be more informative and clear (as they well know) instead of writing an article in such a way as to leave the "unknowing reader" with just a big "question mark" in their head, by the time they finish reading ... LOL ...
It's definitely more fun to write an article, placing the "world's problems" on the back of Apple in Cupertino, instead of the place where the world's problems really lie, with those other culprits so skillfully hidden inside that article ... :-)
I don’t know the answer but I will guess that some time ago Apple sold franchises or assigned distribution rights to these countries and now can’t profitably operate their iTunes model without getting a concession back from the distributor or licensee. Maybe they are trying to buy the rights back or wait for the agreements to expire.
Either that, or it has to do with publishing rights it cannot yet obtain.
Or something else... Like I said I don’t know!
By the way, and I can’t believe I didn’t mention it in my post above, but that post was made via iPad, my first iPad post on FR ever!
In the 1980’s, as a teen and young 20’s, I was all Apple. Started with the //e and ended with the SE Macintosh and a laptop in 1993 or 94. Work forced me to migrate to windows due to software availability.
Took me almost 12 or more years to get back to Apple with the iPod, then another iPod, and now this iPad 3G. Love it. Typing this in bed, listening to a great album at the same time while the better half sleeps quietly.
I think I will log off and watch a movie now :-). Yipee kai yay....
Whats the big deal? Its the protection of intellectual property balanced with potential market income.
Socialism!
Copyright - and that isn’t Apple’s call...
Content licensing organizations are arcane in Europe and vary from nation to nation... and each one has different rules and regulations. Some cross international borders, some do not. Apple is required by the EU's laws to comport its iTunes sales of contents to the local licensing organizations in every locality... hence the multiple iTunes stores, and the lock outs from nation to nation within the EU. If a particular piece of music is not licensed by XYZ organization to be sold from your iTunes store in Germany, it cannot be purchased from the Hungarian iTunes store which license it from ABC org.... and vice verse. It is very Byzantine... but Apple cannot bypass this morass of law and regulation... hence multiple exclusive iTunes stores... and some areas where iTunes are not licensed at all because of highly restrictive copyright laws.
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