“Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. are battling it out globally for smartphone dominance. In India, they are trying to outdo one another by offering various discounts to convince consumers to switch smartphones,” Dhanya Ann Thoppil reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Apple launched a scheme in early April that allows consumers to exchange any of their older smartphones—whether it be an iPhone, an Android-based phone or a Blackberry– for a cash discount of at least 7,000 rupees ($128) on the purchase of an iPhone 4, the basic model available in India,” Thoppil reports. “Shortly after on April 10, South Korean rival Samsung said it would offer a 15% cash back to consumers who purchase its smartphones including the Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Grand, and the Galaxy tablet… Samsung’s promotion is on top of a previous offer that allows customers to buy any of these devices through a 12-month interest-free payment plan.”
“Over the past year, Apple has been trying to grab a greater share of the smartphone market in India by overhauling its iPhone operations, offering interest-free loans to lure more customers and aggressively marketing its phones,” Thoppil reports. “In September, Apple started working directly with two specialized technology products distributors to get its phones across to retail outlets.”
Thoppil reports, “Some analysts say Apple’s move is aimed more at clearing out stocks of its three-year old, outdated model of the iPhone. ‘iPhone 4 is a product that will be phased out over the next one or two years considering the shelf life of a typical Apple product,’ said G. Rajeev, an analyst tracking the mobile phone market in India.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Clearing inventory is not entering into a “price war.”
And market share (uni share) is but one metric to assess “dominance,” and not the most important one by a long shot.