“Apple is offering a range of incentives to make its iPhone more affordable to Indian customers, such as trade-in discounts, subsidies for students and a credit card rebate with American Express,” Mahesh Sharma reports for ZDNet.
“Students who trade-in their old smartphones while upgrading to an iPhone will get 7,777 rupees (US$144),” Sharma reports. “Non-students will be paid 7,000 rupees (US$130). ”
Sharma reports, “Indian customers who purchase a new iPhone using their American Express credit card will receive a ten percent cashback. The smartphone manufacturer will refund a maximum of 6,000 rupees (US$111) to American Express customers who purchase an iPhone 4, 4S or 5 before June 10, according to a full-page advertisement published in a news daily.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple and Samsung locked in smartphone price war in India – or are they? – April 16, 2013
Apple starts a ‘cashback’ smartphone price war with heavy discounted iPhone 4 in India – April 12, 2013
Apple iPhone 4 sales triple in India on new buyback program – April 11, 2013
Apple to triple exclusive stores in India to 200 locations by 2015, sources say – March 26, 2013
Apple cracks India’s smartphone market – March 13, 2013
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Apple counters cheap Android phones in India by relaunching unlocked iPhone 3GS – June 28, 2011
High prices for Apple iPhone 3G in India causes disappointment, outrage – August 25, 2008
Apple faces big challenges in bringing iPhone to India, world’s fastest growing mobile phone market – December 26, 2007
How is 2.5 million iPhones in India as of 2012 “not succeeding”? Zero phones sold would be “not succeeding” (responding to a comment to the article).
Do they have the “zero-cost” iPhones available there as well?
You have to realize that 2.5 million iPhones in India is not anywhere’s close to meeting “expectations” which would have to be at least double that number. Apple will have to at least match or exceed the number Samsung is selling. Anything less is deemed a failure as far as investors are concerned. Samsung is the new standard for sales that the iPhone will have to beat. Of course, we know that is impossible to do but, hey, nothing comes easy for Apple.
LB48,
Sorry fella but you are talking Market share again. We all know that if you give stuff away, you get market share. But that can mean very little.
Samsung sells cheap feature+ phones and calls them smart phones. They barely make any money on them but people that do not know any better….. LB48 and anal…yst, ??? think its something to worry about.
Hmmm, Dell did what samsung is doing… How is that working out for Dell…. and they still “sell” a lot of computers. They just do not make a ton of money on them.
Also India is a hard country to sell to. Most of the people there have little or no money… But there is a thriving middle class and those are the ones that Apple is shooting for, that and students which are headed for the middle class ….. or better.
Just a thought, but we all know that Apple is DOOMED, DOOMED I say.
Just a thought.
To be fair, iPhone is times more popular than any of Samsung’s phones. However, cumulatively, with most of $150 “smartphones” Samsung sells, they, of course, have higher number of “smartphones” sold.
(Though people mostly do not even want or use those devices as smartphones: Samsung and others simply replace featurephones with smartphones, and people have no other choice other than to buy “smartphone” even though they do not now browse the Net via it, nor they buy applications there.
(Hence the latest statistics: 3/4 of all mobile application sales come from iOS versus 20% coming from Android; 60% of all mobile web views worldwide come from iOS.)
“Students who trade-in their old smartphones while upgrading to an iPhone will get 7,777 rupees (US$144),” Sharma reports. “Non-students will be paid 7,000 rupees (US$130). “
Of course, they could also save themselves a little over $500 by just keeping your old smartphone and finishing school. Then there’s selling their old phone themselves and receiving more money.
Very good move, Apple. About time.
People without much money will, as usual, have to use their own common sense to say no. Reality is, nobody on the planet _needs_ a “smart” phone at all. It is a luxury item even in the richest parts of the planet. In poorer regions, an iPhone is an expense that many people could never justify.
At least Apple finally seems to have realized that getting the iPhone into affordability range for a greater worldwide audience is absolutely important to future success. Nobody expects the iPhone to have majority share, but at least Apple will have healthy presence.
Apple would be wise to partner with an outfit like Recellular to ensure that useable phones that get traded in can be donated for re-use in areas that need them like disaster relief. Don’t most phone makers simply recycle the old trade-ins for materials recovery today?