Newsletter
So you’ve been following the news from the MWC 2014 in Barcelona, and by doing so, you’ve read about Sony’s official reveal of their brand-spanking-new flagship smartphone: the Xperia Z2. You may want to stop throwing your hard-earned cash at the computer screen because here are some details on pricing and availability.
As you can tell from the main picture, the Sony Xperia Z2 is £599 ($995) to pre-order from the Sony UK site. That’s a fair chunk of change, and yes, finding out the price made my wallet cry too. But it’s a new flagship handset, and the pre-order price is always higher I hear you say. And you would be entirely correct, because the high price in British Pounds is borne out by the pre-order price of €699($961) in France, Italy and Spain.
This is where things go awry. The Netherlands gets a better deal than its neighbors with the Z2 being up for pre-order at €649($892), which in itself isn’t a vast difference. But then you get to the pre-order price in Germany where the Xperia Z2 has a pre-order price of €599($823). Almost $140 dollars cheaper than its next-door-neighbors and yes, you can probably point to the individual taxing laws of the various states being responsible for some of the price variations, but $140 difference? That’s a significant enough amount to make one’s desire for the device to waver. No doubt the Z2 will be priced more competitively once it hits the mainstream retailers, and like most handsets; with the effects of supply and demand, there will be some deals to found, but for the early adopters it’s likely to be a painful experience, unless you can order from Germany.
Still, it could actually be worse. The Swedes have the most to complain about, with Sony Sweden offering up the Z2 for 5995 kroner ($1105), $210 more than the UK. After all this, there is a bright side. Really, there is. At least the Xperia Z2 is available to pre-order in the aforementioned countries, at present there is no information available on pricing or availability in the US. And with that bombshell, I ask you this: Is this the kind of pricing policy you would accept? Does it bother you if the country next door to you has the same product for sale, from the same company, but at a significantly cheaper price? And would it affect your desire to purchase the device? Let us know in the comments section or via our Google Plus page.