drkohler said:
The japanese source is almost certainly wrong (disgruntled shop owner) or the $7.40 is the net amount after all expenses are accounted for by the dealer - a net profit of 2% is in line with other sales ares - the food industry (and I think actually WalMart) is roughly in that range. Japan generally has higher cost of living, higher rents and social security costs so I'd even assume that store margins are equal if not higher than Europe. Store margins are highly privvy in Europe (in one of my NDAs, it was specifically mentioned that giving out such numbers would result in serious court spanking..) and vary depending on the kind of product sold. I doubt any (bigger) shops will tell you anything if asked. For everyday clothing, for example, it was around 33% years ago (might not have changed), rising to 100% for better clothing and reaching 1000s% for haute couture. A game console is located in the standard consumer electronics area where margins hover in the 20%-25% range. Obviously I have only limited knowledge as far as other countries are concerned, but the business models in Europe are pretty identical (particularly since Europe business is governed by large multinational companies like the Mediamarkt/Saturn group. Microsoft probably is a special case since they would lose tons of money on their gaming hardware alone (despite the fact that 120G HDs are $150 here in Switzerland) given the standard margins. However, MS sells a lot more than gaming hardware so they might cross-finance and bundle stuff. Personally I am quite sure that MS loses more money per console than Sony (comparable systems sell around $60-$80 cheaper), but there is no way of knowing without hard data. |
U may be right but if its in US n Japan its around $8 - 12 than i have serious doubts that its around $50 in Europe. So certainly i will take the japanese source over your words on this matter atleast.
ps. quoting for clothing is not right when we are discussing PS3.. they r two totally different markets.
