Microsoft is raising prices in the UK thanks to Brexit

Microsoft has announced that it will be raising the prices of its business software and cloud services in the UK as a result of Brexit.

Microsoft’s blog post revealed that the company will be raising business software prices by 13% and cloud service prices by a whopping 22% from January 1st 2017. This will only affect products sold directly by Microsoft, with any third party resellers having in control of their own pricing structure. It will also not change anything for those that have a volume license with price protection.

It’s worth noting that this is mainly a price increase for businesses and not the consumer, although with resellers and retailers having to pay a new higher price that could be passed onto customers in some places.

We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment,” reads Microsoft’s blog post. These changes are similar to the recent harmonisation adjustments to pricing in Norwegian krone and Swiss franc we made in April 2016.”

Since the vote to leave the European Union the pound has basically tanked, losing a ton of value. As a result companies such as Microsoft are not making as much money as they used to at the same prices, so are being forced to raise them.