Yes, they can and they do.
(btw, the european 2 years warranty is just a smokescreen, the real warranty is six months, after that it's your duty to demonstrate that the item was faulty when delivered).

you need to read up on Purchasing Power Parity and the Gini-coefficient.

This might also be of interest, it demonstrates this concept quite nicely.

guys (still loughing...) there is a serious fact you need to keep in mind! "different markets, have different prices", selling stuff all over the world means you have to adapt on the market and put your goods into the markets price range!
15% of European milk production gets pulverized and shipped to Africa for a fourth of its price, its even cheaper than their own milk. (that this behavior destroys the African market at milk is another discussion)

its not! I dont worry about any device within warranty, and even 2 weeks before warranty was over I got my DVD-Player replaced the second time, my mobile was replaced 6 month before warranty ended, my mainboard about a month and so on. I put up a smokescreen now... /me is out for a cigarette

That's thanks to your national legislation and/or manufacturer goodwill, not due to EU law.

actually the price on newegg is $549 (373€)+no sales tax (except CA) and free shipping. This is the final price, a lot cheaper than the 600€ ($883) in EU

I agree, the notion that same things should cost the same everywhere is plainly ludicrous. Just compare the price of a Big Mac here in Switzerland with anywhere else in Europe...
So even after correcting for VAT and warranty coverage the prices for most items will still be different.
Btw, the higher French price, could it be due to extra taxation? Like a recycling charge for electronic devices or so? Just guessing...

*Desperate call for help*

Hey everyone, I kinda feel stuck between a rock and a hard place here: as an American citizen, I feel entitled to the low low prices offered on Amazon.com for the N900, but as an exchange student currently living in the EU, I feel safer with Nokia's warranty and repair network here in Belgium.

My Dad will be visiting in February, should I ask him to bring me a late Christmas present? Should I buy it now from Amazon (5% cashback, etc.), or will the price drop drastically after the holidays? More importantly, if my Dad's getting it in the US, what should he look for in terms of defects? Oh and also, does anyone know whether Nokia has some sort of basic international warranty? I don't feel like having to ship it back to the US just cause it died after a month (btw, does anyone know what the chance of that would be?)

Basically, I just need a little help getting convinced. I'm a fairly experienced Linux user, I'm not scared of terminals or slightly quirky interfaces. What I'm scared of is Nokia focusing on some other big project and forgetting about N900 users. I keep hearing about software fixes for this and that, and people making excuses for all sorts of flaws by saying it'll all be fixed by Nokia engineers snapping their collective fingers or something, but I still haven't heard of any revolutionary software update.

My main question, I guess, is this: people seem to say that Nokia warned everyone this would be a geek/developer/tinkerer-oriented product, and that's why Nokia is not pushing it too hard to the general public, but is that just an excuse to put out a half-baked product and hope "the community will fix it, maaan"? 'Cause I like to drink the occasional glass of Kool-Aid, but I don't love the crash you get after that sugar high (read: I don't want to be stuck with a nice shiny paperweight in 6 months)

tl;dr: I have a desperate need for someone to approve my irrational and irresponsible purchase, please help.

Hi
I'm in almost the same situation, I'm from Spain, here the N900 price is 600€ and the warranty are 2 years, and the 2 years are for real, if the phone is broken at month 23 they will have to change it, unless it's my own fault (if I drop it or something).
I'm going to NY next month so I can buy it a lot cheaper than here (about at 2/3 of the price)
So my question is, would you give up the warranty just by 1/3 of the price?
or do you think that nokia will repair my phone here in Spain under the European terms of warranty?

Thanks

I know that Nokia Greece (Alphacopy) will not respect a non-EU warranty for any hardware issues. If they decide it's a software issue they will only respect the warranty for phones bought from their distribution network in Greece.

I would expect all EU dealers to act in a similar manner. At worse they will need to confer with the Nokia dealer of the EU country you bought it from, perhaps with an extra delay for you getting your phone fixed.

All in all, sadly, this system basically forces you to think twice before buying electronics across borders in the EU