“Tim Cook will need to convince Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the iPhone is cutting edge if the Apple Inc. chief executive officer is to gain easier access to what will be the world’s second-largest smartphone market,” Adi Narayan reports for Bloomberg.
“The government on Tuesday said it would relax rules for companies as long as they can prove their technology is so ‘state of the art’ that it’s impossible for them to comply with norms requiring 30 percent of products be sourced locally,” Narayan reports. “The move paves the way for Apple to open its own stores in India, where it depends on resellers to market its China-made devices.”
“Apple currently has a minuscule 2 percent of the market in India, according to International Data Corp., partly because it doesn’t wrap its devices into discounted deals but also because consumers are denied the Apple store experience that is important to sales,” Narayan reports. “Smartphone shipments to India grew 44 percent in the April-June quarter from a year earlier, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets, according to IDC. The double-digit pace should continue for the next few years, IDC predicted, putting India on pace to overtake the U.S. by 2017.”
You are correct, but it galls me to no end. Bribery is rampant in India and far to common in the US. It needs to stop. Let each product win on its own merits, not on the size of the bankroll flowing to officials.
Is it any wonder why Android is doing well in India?
You have to spend time in India with Indians to get what is really meant by that new law: Indian politicians will allow your high-tech company into India if you can prove that your funding allows for backsheesh. If Apple caves in to the corruption and bribery in India, then they have the green light.
Apple will not cave to direct bribery. That does not mean there won’t be a quid pro quo. A handful of solar farms and data centers in country might do the trick.
You are ignorant. Yes, India has throngs of poor people. It also has way more PhDs per capita than the US. And has birthed some of the most important theoretical physicists and mathematicians.
E.g. Bose, as in Einstein-Bose condensate.
Ashoke Sen – one of the key people in the development of string theory.
And on, and on.
……and most of them would be owning a big ass Samsung phone. To them it’s all about price. That’s why Apple cannot make much headway in India, hugh middle class or not.
Good at math but not so good if you throw a curveball.
…would be more convincing (to some) to point out the iPhone is ‘Art of the States. Deal with it, or deal with China’.
Apple probably just needs to provide the Minister with a set of one each of Apple products for “evaluation”.
You are correct, but it galls me to no end. Bribery is rampant in India and far to common in the US. It needs to stop. Let each product win on its own merits, not on the size of the bankroll flowing to officials.
Is it any wonder why Android is doing well in India?
You have to spend time in India with Indians to get what is really meant by that new law: Indian politicians will allow your high-tech company into India if you can prove that your funding allows for backsheesh. If Apple caves in to the corruption and bribery in India, then they have the green light.
Apple will not cave to direct bribery. That does not mean there won’t be a quid pro quo. A handful of solar farms and data centers in country might do the trick.
So indirect bribery it is then
What a joke. Yeah, like India is such a “state of the art” country.
You are ignorant. Yes, India has throngs of poor people. It also has way more PhDs per capita than the US. And has birthed some of the most important theoretical physicists and mathematicians.
E.g. Bose, as in Einstein-Bose condensate.
Ashoke Sen – one of the key people in the development of string theory.
And on, and on.
Yep, it would be interesting to know how many professionals working in the U.S. are of Indian descent. Bet it’s a bunch.
……and most of them would be owning a big ass Samsung phone. To them it’s all about price. That’s why Apple cannot make much headway in India, hugh middle class or not.
Good at math but not so good if you throw a curveball.
…would be more convincing (to some) to point out the iPhone is ‘Art of the States. Deal with it, or deal with China’.
All I an do is laugh. India can be so strange:
Tim Cook will need to convince Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the iPhone is cutting edge