Brexit is all over the news headlines right now, thanks to Theresa May’s negotiations with the EU, but since the vote to leave, we’ve seen a nasty impact on the prices of tech – a situation which is ongoing according to a new report from Which that underlines the rising prices of PCs.
This is the cover story from the latest issue of Which magazine (as highlighted by Computer Weekly), with the consumer watchdog quantifying the Brexit-fuelled price rises we’ve seen when it comes to popular computer manufacturers.
Apple’s MacBooks, for example, have in some cases seen their price tags increase by almost 20% in the UK; and they were far from cheap to start with.
And Microsoft’s Surface hybrids have witnessed hikes of from 11% to 15%, and again, those are premium pieces of hardware which had weighty asking prices before the decision to leave the EU.
Almost all major hardware vendors have put their prices up thanks to unfavourable currency fluctuations, and as well as the aforementioned two firms, that also means Dell, HP and Lenovo.
The average increase on hardware prices is around the 10 to 15% mark, with software prices getting a heftier whack of around 20%.
Put in Context
A recent report from analyst firm Context (spotted by Trusted Reviews) paints an even bleaker picture, asserting that the average price of PCs, workstations and laptops reached £480 in July and August of this year – a painful 30% increase compared to the same period in 2016.
Context noted that component shortages (including memory and SSDs) have had something of an effect in bringing on this price inflation, but the main cause was Brexit-related currency issues.
- We can only hope that Black Friday bargains temporarily counter these rises
