Apple’s Red Friday Sale skips the Philippines

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief January 6, 2012 · 1 min read

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Contrary to earlier reports, Apple Philippines is not included in the Red Friday Sale that Apple is holding across most of South-East Asia’s online stores today.

Over the past days, numerous reports that Apple Philippines will host a Red Friday Sale today seems untrue.

However, the sales did happen in other Asian neighbors, including Hong Kong and Singapore with many of the Apple products slashed off their regular prices.

The biggest discount seems to be HK$770 or SG$120 applied on all Macbooks and iMacs (equivalent of around Php4,000).

Non-Apple products are also up for discounts with a Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air getting a SG$300 discount.

The more obvious question is why is the Philippines not included in the sale? Is the Philippines not Chinese enough to celebrate the Year of the Dragon and get the same discounts?

In any case, the discounts aren’t that great anyway.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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34 Comments

fotolocco · 14 years ago

good thing the country I am currently based had the sale. Apple does not markdown its products often. Even in tech shows here, apple does not participate often.

Kaya a 5K peso discount (for the macs) is very much welcomed. On top of that Apple products in the PH are much expensive compared to its neighbors. Say for example ipad2 64GB 3G is 7K peso more expensive in Apple Store Philippines compared to other countries. So in total, when apple slashed 1.5K pesos from the ipad last friday, it meant at least 8.5K pesos cheaper here compared in the Philippines.

pedro · 14 years ago

Off topic, ok naman Apple products pero parang hyped lang esp iPhones and iPads.

I have an Asus Eeepad Transformer. It is my first tablet and I decided buying it after reading exhaustive information from tech blogs and sites. It is about the same price as Ipad2 without its keyboard dock, so you can say I bought it not because it is cheaper but because of so many valid considerations. And if I will answer the question above, here are some of the answers:

1. I want to be able to drag and drop files from my laptop to my tablet.
2. I want to be able to bluetooth files from my table to another device.
3. I want to be able to watch any video file in my tablet without converting them. Right now I can even watch my super HD DVDs on my Transformer, I just copy the raw DVD files from the DVD to the microSD and voila, they all play on my tablet.
4. Yes, I want an expandable memory slot.
5. I want a tablet with fast-growing ecosystem.
6. I want to install mostly free games and apps.
7. I want a tablet with a display size best suited for watching panoramic movies.
8. I want a tablet that can display all an Internet site’s content (yes the flash content and videos) as I see it in my pc.
9. Related to number 1, but I want to be able to just drag and drop mp3 files and not rely on iTunes.
10. Yes, I want a tablet than can transform into a laptop and have 16 hours battery life in the process.

I think I made the right decision, because it has been 6 months, and I haven’t encountered the buggy stuff you are talking about on Honeycomb, if there were, I didn’t notice them at all.

If all people won’t be blinded by the Apple glitter, I think the above are enough factors for them not to really consider an iPad as their tablet. They will enjoy a tablet in all its potential.

Ben · 14 years ago

Yuga’s right. Majority of our country’s population is not Chinese.

Have a check below. Not all SE countries are included in the sale:
http://www.apple.com/asia/lny/choose-your-country/

Ani_Kimchi · 14 years ago

China = Chinnese = cheap crap that breaks 5 minutes after you get it home. (If you’re lucky)

Ben · 14 years ago

@Ani_kimchi

At this time and age where majority of gadgets are manufactured in China, that joke just sounds lame. ;)

Bryan · 14 years ago

You can blame the government for that. They put a heavy tax on a lot of imported stuffs. It has a purpose actually but futile in current generation.

Take this for example, Toshiba R500 back when it was first release cost roughly Php50k in US. Here? It cost Php142k. Oh, I also need to mention that it was delayed too.

coachjojoc · 14 years ago

Maybe it’s because of the number of jail-broken phones and pirated OS software here. LOL

paul · 14 years ago

hmmm… roughly 39k for a brand new macbook air… not bad. still won’t bite, though. i’m quite contented with my acer aspire one. ;)

Luis · 14 years ago

Why? Are we that insignificant? Denied once again… sometimes it makes me feel bad to live in a third world country since we get denied of new and exciting stuff like technology, gadgets, gizmos and other trends… So sad… (-_-)

Ani_Kimchi · 14 years ago

So, why don’t you and other s DO something about your country? Nope. That would take effort. It’s easier just to be lazy, SO ACCEPT IT!

Bryan · 14 years ago

@simplynice: hm… So why do you think HK needs that sale when everywhere you look there’s an iphone4 user and that even a MTR janitor owns one?

simplynice93 · 14 years ago

because hongkong is concerned a major market of apple and not the philippines. maybe they need to reach their target sales for HK which is higher than before.

Aww · 14 years ago

This ruined my day. I had been preparing for this ever since I read the news several days ago, even had my debit card loaded on the last minute. Seriously, what a total letdown.

simplynice93 · 14 years ago

Maybe Apple thinks sales are very good here in our country, kaya there is no need for Red Friday sale. Kahit kasi mahal, bibili ang mga Pinoy para magmukhang sosyal…

Iyan Sommerset · 14 years ago

I think it’s the other way around. Sales here don’t matter that much to them, so they didn’t bother. As Globe and Smart are just unveiling the ip4s and ipads are still mostly bought through the providers, their sale won’t bring in enough projected sales to justify it.

We *are* a 3rd world country. In theory, we shouldn’t even be bothering with luxury items like these. The people here who can buy these, already did or will do so regardless of a sale or not, so in the end it won’t matter.

Apple knows who its customer base is and we the Philippines, are just not “it”.

simplynice93 · 14 years ago

@iyan i agree. but the sales in philippines is getting bigger and bigger. because of this, other companies like samsung have risked to grow its market here. that is why samsung sales are high and apple is currently more content in suing other rival companies than marketing its products to more countries