International customers seeking to buy an iPad got one step closer late Sunday evening, as Apple rolled out pre-orders for an additional nine countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. All six models of iPad are available for pre-order in the countries and are expected to ship on May 28, as Apple previously announced.
In the interests of comparison, we've assembled two charts of the international pricing on the iPad: the first shows the cost in the currency of the respective countries; the second translates those prices into U.S. dollars (conversion rates via Google as of 10AM ET this morning).
While the prices are unequivocally more expensive outside the U.S., the disparity is not perhaps as pronounced as it has been with previous Apple products. The 16GB Wi-Fi model in particular is, in most cases (read: non-European countries), less than $100 more expensive than in the U.S. Not entirely surprisingly, Canada seems to have the best deals across the board, though Japan is not far behind and actually has better prices on some of the lower capacity models.
Note also that there is a pricing differential on some models within the European Union countries: while France, Germany, and Italy have the same prices for the 16GB Wi-Fi, 32GB Wi-Fi, 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G, and 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G models, Germany has higher prices for both 64GB flavors. Spain, on the other hand, has cheaper prices throughout the lineup.
If you believe the e-mails floating around that purport to be from Steve Jobs, tax--specifically value added tax (VAT)--is also responsible for the pricing differentials, especially in the U.K. where the difference seems to range between $150 and $200 more per model. The Apple CEO also reportedly told German customers to "blame [their] government" for an extra new copyright tax on computers that makes some models more expensive than elsewhere in the European Union.
Presented below are the full charts for your perusal.
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