Nexus S: Y u so expensive in Malaysia?

Maxis has announced that the Nexus S will hit local stores this Friday with a retail price of RM2,499 outright without contract. Immediately we got comments in response to out earlier post saying that the retail price for the Nexus S here is Malaysia is exorbitant.

Consider the math. You can get an unlocked Nexus S from Best Buy in the US for about US$530 which translates to about RM1620 at today’s exchange rates. This is of course, excluding taxes and what not. But even if you factor in all the taxes and shipping costs, a privately purchased — meaning one single unit bought — shouldn’t cost the savvy internet shopper anything more that RM2k tops.

In fact, bulk orders and shipments should yield even more savings.

So our question is why is Maxis and Samsung asking for a close to RM900 margin on top of the US retail price for the Nexus S? If anything, the Malaysian RRP for the Nexus S should be very close to the US price. What justifies the 54% jump in price?

Could it be that because the Nexus S is a fairly decent spec-ed device infused with the strong desirability of the Google branding Maxis and Samsung feel that they can capitalise on the hype and make some money from the huge margins?

We have no idea and we can only speculate at the moment but what is certain is that we don’t think that this should be the case and we hope Maxis and Samsung can give us answer.

What do you think of the price of the Nexus S here in Malaysia