Apple partners 'need to get on with it' after price rises
'People sitting around moaning about price rises is wasting everyone's time' one Apple partner says
Apple resellers must move on following the price rises last week and accept it as "just the way it is", according to one of the vendor's partners.
With the launch of the newest version of its MacBook Pro last week, Apple also raised its prices by up to 20 per cent.
The price of the MacBook Air rose from £849 on 26 September to £949 on 27 September. Entry-level 13in MacBook Pros without the new Touch Bar technology are £1,449. The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar starts from £1,749, whereas the previous generation started at £999.
This follows the plunge in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote. It fell from $1.49 in June to $1.22 at the end of October. One pound is currently worth $1.25, a 16 per cent decrease in total since June.
Warren Peel, managing director of Apple VAR Trams, said the price rises are "just one of those things", adding that Apple partners have had it easier than other vendors' partners over the few months since Brexit.
"It is just one of those things. The prices were always going to rise. We all just need to get on with it. People who have invested in Apple are going to continue to invest in it. Some of the other manufacturers charge you for additional software. With Apple you get the software and software updates free. I think people sitting around moaning about price rises is just wasting everyone's time," he said.
"Apple have kept their prices static for a long time. Every other vendor – HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, whoever it is – changes their prices on a monthly basis. Apple didn't do that. Apple resellers have had it nice for the last four or five months with no price rises, and now Apple have had to change things."
Apple is the last of the major vendors to announce rises, with Dell, HP, Lenovo and Asus all saying their prices would be increasing in the summer.
Microsoft announced earlier this month that their enterprise cloud solutions would be rising by 22 per cent, with their on-premise enterprise prices rising 13 per cent.
Apple's price rises top the total depreciation of the pound, but Robert May (pictured right), managing director of VAR Ramsac, said that most of them seemed "genuine".
"There is probably an element of trying to predict what is going to happen," he explained. "One of the things we have seen since Brexit is lots and lots of iterative price increases, which becomes frustrating. So I guess if they are rounding it up, I can see why they are doing that.
"Some of [the vendor price rises] I think are genuine; some of it is purely down to the strength of the pound. But some of it I think is Brexit-labelling and it is an excuse to push up prices. The pound is doing what it is doing so some of it is unavoidable, but some of it is an excuse."
Both May and Peel said they are passing on the price rises to customers, with Peel saying he "can't afford not to".
May added: "I don't think the channel can absorb it. Margins dictate that it isn't possible. I think [customers] are just accepting of what the economy is. Generally, so long as you give clients notice, they are quite appreciative of that and it is making people make decisions quicker."