Quote:
Originally Posted by
cgc0202 
I have not read of any major US company that restricted the sale of their products abroad simply because of currency fluctuations.
CGC
It's about announcing and starting sales in Euro currency, something Apple has pushed back several times (by no less than 2 months in total). They can't start selling iPads at say 479 for the 16 GB WiFi and then have the Euro decline another 20 % or more. That would force them to raise prices in the middle of the release cycle, which is about the worst thing a company can do. No matter how hard you try to explain it, customer will hate you for that.
Apple will announce prices on May 10 now, which is one day after state elections in Germany, which was the major reason why the EU could not agree on sanctions and aids for Greece, which is the one reason the situation has become worse and worse for Greece over the last 3 months.
It seems that the heads of EU have finally resolved the disagreement this week, so the markets and currency should finally stabilize. Let's hope that Apple will be able to announce a price next week that will be sustainable until April 2011.
To be clear, I consider this to be a sideshow compared to Apple's apparent production issues. Nonetheless, Apple is becoming more international with every quarter, and their European revenues ($4 billion in the last quarter) are now almost as important as their American revenues ($5 billion last quarter, including Canada and Latin America).
