Apple today opened bookings in India for its much-awaited 12-series models of its flagship iPhone, with availability from Friday, October 30. However, the new models seem to be just one prong of the Cupertino giant’s new strategy to garner India’s premium smartphone market.
At prices starting at nearly Rs 70,000 and going beyond Rs 1.5 lakh, the new Apple iPhone 12 series would be the costliest phones in the Indian market, since Vertu and its gold-plated avatar bid adieu some time ago.
More than the high prices—Apple, after all, is not known as an affordable brand—what was consternating to many Apple fanboys was the price difference of the new series in India vis-a-vis other major markets like the US and the Gulf. As many Twitter users pointed out, you could fly to Dubai, buy one of the new models and fly back, and it would still work out to be cheaper than the stated price in India!
This, even as Apple India slashed prices of last year’s model iPhone 11, as well as the year-before's iPhone XR in never-before-seen offers—with trade-in, you could now get an iPhone 11, last year’s model, for as low as 25,000 rupees even! To top it, the pre-Diwali shopping festivals by e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart both had hefty discounts on older models, throwing in the Air Pods and chargers (now discontinued by Apple) free, as well as cashbacks on select credit cards
What exactly was going on? Is Apple more keen on Indians buying its older phones?
“In the last 6 to 8 months or so, Apple has changed its strategy in India,” points out Ankit Malhotra, analyst with Counterpoint Research, a leading consultancy. “Now Apple is looking at volumes.”
While the tech giant has discounted older models after a new launch some years ago as well, the level of discounts and marketing push directing customers towards the older models seem pretty new. “I cannot recall the iPhone getting a discount of 20 to 25,000 rupees. This is unprecedented!” exclaims Malhotra.
“They are looking for a bigger pie in India. While the overall global mobile phone market has declined, the premium segment is growing. Apple believes that with their already good brand image, this could be an inflection point in India,” he adds.
In Apple’s perspective, the fanboys and those who can afford it will go for the latest model no matter what the price, while the desirability factor will push many users, including those using rivals like Samsung and OnePlus, to get the older models. Win-win?
For Apple India, the past few years have been tumultuous, with leadership changes and sales flip-flop. Pricing around and upwards of one lakh rupees, seen in models like the iPhone X (pronounced ‘ten’ and not ‘x’ and brought out as a next-gen device to mark ten years of the iPhone in end-2017) saw sales figures dipping. A shift in the Steve Jobs-era disdain toward the Indian market and the fast-changing equation between the US and China and its possible impact on the lucrative Chinese market meant the company had to pay more attention to India as well. India’s impressive mobile sales trajectory, too, helped.
There are other reasons, as well. Apple’s contract manufacturers like Foxconn have just started making iPhones in India, and among the line-up is the iPhone 11, giving the company ample stocks, as well as flexibility to tinker with the prices. Some reports suggest the lure of the Indian government’s production-linked scheme that offers companies incentives of up to 6 per cent in increase in sales of locally-made smartphones over the levels they reached the previous financial year.
Then there is the churn in consumer spending after the pandemic hit. While the affordable handset market has been hit due to the uncertainty in the economy, something quite the reverse seems to have happened to those who haven’t lost jobs or had their salary cut—they suddenly have a lot of savings and disposable income!
“Expenses have gone down as we are not going out and spending money on the things we used to earlier,” Malhotra says, noting that this expendable income was being spent on items like electronics.