Good news for consumers and bad news for merchants are two-digit price drops for high-tech products. Thus, since July 2007 prices for mobile phones and digital cameras decreased by 14% and 16% respectively and for notebooks even by 25%. In the meantime in Germany prices for high-quality electronic products such as computers, flat screen tvs or mobile phones are 5% below the European average. The lowest prices for high-tech products can be found in Bulgaria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
“High-tech products contribute a lot to curbing inflation in Germany”, said Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer, chairmand of BITKOM. “Price competition in the high-tech business is enormous. At the same time products such as computers or mobile phone become increasingly performant” is the description of the German market by Mr. Scheer.
Besides laptops (-25%) prices for tv sets (-19%) and laser printers (-12%) also fell significantly.
However, it is not only prices for electronic devices which fell but also those for services. Over the past twelve months the biggest price drop was suffered by providers of music download which suffered a loss of 29%. Prices for telephone and internet service fell by 5% as compared to the beginning of 2007. Prices for mobile phone services fell by 4%.
However, there are countries in which prices for high-tech are even lower: In Switzerland prices for high-tech products are 11% below the EU average, in the Czech Republic by 8% and in Poland by 7%. Prices for information technology and consumer electronics are lowest in Bulgaria (17% below the European average) and highest in Finland and Denmark where prices are 13% above the European average, followed by Ireland (+12%). 