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Posts Tagged ‘ed husic’
Enterprise IT, News - Wednesday, March 27, 2013 14:30 - 19 Comments
Microsoft stonewalls IT price hike inquiry
news Global technology giant Microsoft has declined to provide the Federal Parliament’s IT price hike inquiry with concrete details as to why many of its products cost dramatically more in Australia than in its home country of the US, despite prolonged questioning on the issue from Members of Parliament last week.
The company has long charged Australians more for the same products — often delivered online with no physical boxed copy — than it charges residents and businesses in its home country of the United States. For example, when Microsoft launched its flagship Office 365 service in Australia in June 2011, the company jacked up local prices by up to 76 percent. The company has previously declined to attend the inquiry, but was eventually compelled to attend, alongside fellow reluctant vendors Apple and Adobe.
At the inquiry, Microsoft Australia was greeted with a hostile reception by Labor backbencher Ed Husic, who has been leading the push to hold global technology vendors accountable for their Australian pricing habits. Husic said that he had received an email from one of Microsoft’s partners in Australia, which stated that the price it had to pay for identical Microsoft software as 50 percent higher in Australia in the US, for the same downloaded software — no international versions. “How is it that the Microsoft partners feel that even they are being overcharged on product themselves which they feel they then have to pass on?” Husic asked Microsoft Australia managing director Pip Marlow (pictured, above).
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