I’d buy that for a dollar
Consumer electronics giant Sony has revealed the UK pricing for its new S tablet, which was formally launched earlier this week. The good news is that we haven't got a straight dollar-for-pound swap, but the bad news is that we're still being charged more than in the US.
If you go to the Sony US store you can get the 16GB S for $499.99 and the 32GB one for $100 more. The UK Sony store offers the 16GB one for £399 and the 32GB one for £479 - all for pre-order. There's also pricing for the 16GB 3G one at £499. The dollar exchange rate is around 1.6 right now, so if that was strictly followed we'd be looking at £312.50 for the 16GB one.
For some reason Dixons has issued a press release claiming exclusivity on pre-orders for the S. "Sony's Tablet S is a real contender in the tablet market and one we expect to be a big success," said Mark Slater, category director at Dixons Retail. "The two week preorder period for the Sony Tablet S will be a very exciting period for us to see how popular this tablet will be with our customers."
It's debatable how noteworthy winning exclusivity on a pre-order is, but Dixons clearly doesn't even have that. The operative sentence in the release says: "...an exclusive window, with Sony, for customers to pre-order their first ever tablet computer," so maybe that's what they're trying to say, but if so the use of the term ‘exclusive' is questionable. Furthermore Dixons is cheekily looking to make an extra £20 on the 32GB version.