My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be har

My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be harder/impossible to split nation-wide efforts from world-wide efforts) this is not being done. This also accounts for different prices in different European countries; e.g.: the cost of making business is very high in Italy (high salary taxes, high network costs, impossible to fire/sack people, etc.) so they make their products cost more in Italy to account for the additional costs of running operations there.