Where can you buy the cheapest iPad?

According to The Wall Street Journal, customers in Argentina need to pay the highest price for an iPad, more than double cost in Malaysia, the cheapest place to buy it. Even though iPad have become a common consumer electronic product since Apple launched it in 2010. The cost of iPad is still very high in some countries.

Commsec, a unit of Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has showed that it needs $1094.11 to buy a 16GB with Wifi in Argentina, compared with $473.77 in Malaysia. Except Argentina, north Europe and Latin America are also expensive places to buy an iPad. ($791.40 in Brazil and $725.32 in Denmark)

Commsec has been keeping track of iPod price in global and added iPad recently. The purpose is to monitor whether currencies are valued appropriately.

In theory, price differentials between countries are not sustainable in the long term. Because customers will buy overseas for lower price/cheap products. But in fact, tariffs, import and export restrictions, and travel cost could have major impact on the price. So we can see the different price in different countries.

In the graphic, we can see the 6 cheapest places for an iPad are Malaysia, Canada, America, Hongkong and Australia and the 6 most expensive places for an iPad are Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Sweden and Poland.

BTW, China is the main Apple manufacture place, but we can see the selling price in China is $602.52, compared with Hongkong almost $100 cheaper. That shows why some Chinese buy their Apple product in Hongkong.