How much will Brexit really cost your business?

The effects of Brexit on the technology market have, up till now, been pretty unclear. But looking at the trends in pricing, it’s now obvious that businesses will be paying a lot more for their technology in 2017 – which, realistically, that companies on fixed budgets will be able to do a lot less.

The most well-publicised example of price increases on technology is, of course, Apple. After the release of the new MacBook Pro range, prices on several of the company’s products rose – but Apple isn’t the only one.

As of 1 January, Microsoft will be raising prices on many of its on-premise enterprise software, as well as its enterprise cloud products. The excellent OnePlus 3 phone saw its price rise by £20. Dell raised prices on many of its laptops, as did HP, Asus and ViewSonic. We expect almost every technology product to see similar increases in the next few months.

Just what’s the impact on a company with, say, a £50,000 budget? We took a simple example of a company wanting to buy new laptops with a 12-month subscription to Office 365 Enterprise E1, and asked our friends at Statista to take a look at what you could buy pre-Brexit increases versus what you could buy next year. We looked at Macs rather than PCs because it’s far easier to gather the data for before and after pricing – but we think that Apple’s price increases are unlikely to be out of line with the industry as a whole.

As you can see from the graphic, the difference is pretty striking. Essentially, our imaginary company will only be able to equip 20 employees next year, rather than the 29 they could prior to the collapse of the pound. Or, of course, they would have to increase their budget significantly. Either way, the impact on businesses wanting to invest in new equipment is going to be pretty severe.