NI cards and Software are 30% more expensive in Europe.than in U.S.

[BRUNNER Ange, Cathy, Nicolas & Clara]

Can somebody explain what is the reason......

We should all buy our card in the U.S.

[Labviewguru]

There are probably a number of reasons...

Different market
Cost of distribution and exportation to Europe
Licensing issues
Conformity with European Standards
Tarrifs
EU laws regarding Foreign competition is probably a big reason. Europe isn't exactly in free trade the United States, and seems to do what they can to isolate American companies from their markets.

All of these reasons will definitely have an affect on the cost of goods.

It isn't as though you can't buy your boards over here and take them to Europe, but you do have to deal with customs, and may be hit with a tarrif.

I recently worked on a project that involved some NI (but mostly other COTS hardware) that was shipped over to the UK. I don't recall any major issues, but cus
toms was definitely an issue.

I hope this is helpful. If you still have questions, why not talk to someone at NI. I'm sure marketing will give you a great speech, but they are also the only ones that can really answer the questions.

-Mike Du'Lyea
Advanced Test Engineering
http://advancedtestengineering.com

[BRUNNER Ange, Cathy, Nicolas & Clara]

I disagree with the following issue :
There is no EU laws to limit US export in EU but there are some laws to
limit EU steel to be sold in US.
Cost of distribution should be the same in US and in EU (EU is a big market
for NI)
Conformity with EU laws : The number of card sold in EU is quite big, thus
few $ per card should be ok....

I have already asked the question to NI but I didn't get any answer yet.

Should we stop buying NI card and software in Europe ?
I really think NOT....
They have very good products but i still think EU could accept a 10 %
difference BUT NOT 30%.


> There are probably a number of reasons...
>
> Different market
> Cost of distribution and exportation to Europe
> Licensing issues
> Conformity with Euro
pean Standards
> Tarrifs
> EU laws regarding Foreign competition is probably a big reason.
> Europe isn't exactly in free trade the United States, and seems to do
> what they can to isolate American companies from their markets.
>
> All of these reasons will definitely have an affect on the cost of
> goods.
>
> It isn't as though you can't buy your boards over here and take them
> to Europe, but you do have to deal with customs, and may be hit with a
> tarrif.
>
> I recently worked on a project that involved some NI (but mostly other
> COTS hardware) that was shipped over to the UK. I don't recall any
> major issues, but customs was definitely an issue.
>
> I hope this is helpful. If you still have questions, why not talk to
> someone at NI. I'm sure marketing will give you a great speech, but
> they are also the only ones that can really answer the questions.
>
> -Mike Du'Lyea
> Advanced Test Engineering
> http://advancedtestengineering.com

[DNicholls]

I have spoken to the NI reps about this subject as I think basically NI are screwing us in Europe! However they did give as some of the reasons for the difference things like support and tariffs in Europe etc. I don't know that it was a satisfactory answer but it was an answer.

They also said that they are addressing some of these issues and are trying to get the prices to be more similar on both sides of the pond.

We have purchased software from the US through our sister company and it was hand carried. As far as I know we only had to pay the VAT because it was over £600 in value. I contacted Customs and Excise and there were no other charges for software. It may be different for hardware and also different in other EU countries.

Now
also NI are saying that they only give support for hardware if it is used in the same country that it was purchased from, so if I buy a card from the US and then have a problem with it, they won't honour any support agreements. I got to say this sounds a bit suspicious and if any one were brave enough to make a legal challenge on this I think they may get a positive result. I'm not a lawyer though so I don't really know!

I still come back to my original point though and that is that I still feel we are getting screwed over here!

Dave Nicholls.

[JRA]

I would assume this is just the classic supply and demand scenario. It's simply markets. I know that, in Great Britain, Levis blue jeans (made in America) cause much more than they do in America. There are many reasons why, including tariffs, but that's just how it turns out.

Also, I do believe that NI is working to change the situation, though I could be wrong. I know they recently opened up a manufacturing facility in Europe to help drive down costs. How much? I don't know. But it may help.

[DNicholls]

It's an interesting point about supply and demand and I think you are right.

As an example we have bought a few NI-CAN cards and these are the same price if not even marginally cheaper(depending on exchange rates) than in the U.S.

It's also worth remembering that up until quite recently CAN has really not been used in the U.S., so my cynical view would be that because there is no significant market in the U.S. for this product, they don't bother to either hike up the European price or make the U.S. price much lower.

[strategic]

FYI, the import duties for measurement boards into Europe is 4.8%. VAT/Sales tax is extra - but that can be re-claimed. Shipping will add negligable cost due to the volumes.

There are ecomomies of scale in the US, for example in Europe there are additional costs of regional offices, regional marketing activities (and we know how much marketing NI does), etc. Also the GDP of the US is still larger than the total Europe GDP.

But I agree that the price difference of 30+% is hard to justify even taking these factors into consideration.