“Less than four months after relaunching iPhone 4, Apple decided to once again withdraw its only phone below Rs 20,000, appearing to ease up on its strategy to push volumes in emerging markets such as India to protect margins,” Writankar Mukherjee reports for The Times of India. “The move comes as Apple reported a $41 drop globally in the average selling price (ASP) of the iPhone to $596 in the quarter ended March, which analysts blamed on the relaunch of the iPhone 4 and the cut in iPhone 4S prices in emerging markets. Three of Apple’s leading trade partners said fresh supplies of the iPhone 4 in India have stopped in the past two weeks and the company has already indicated to its trade partners that it won’t be taking fresh orders for the model.”
“Apple had decided to resume production of iPhone 4 to compete harder in markets such as India, Brazil and China. It will now pull out the product from all markets, one of its trade partners said. Another partner said the iPhone 4 had served its purpose in India: it doubled the consumer base of iPhones to more than 25 lakh people in one year. And, iPhone users generally being brand loyal, it’s unlikely that these users will migrate to any other brand, the person added.,” Mukherjee reports. “Trade partners also said that the iPhone 4s has emerged as the firm’s top-selling phone after Apple launched a Rs 7,500 buyback offer last month, reducing the gap with the iPhone 4 to Rs 3,000. ‘With the buyback offer, iPhone 4s is now Apple’s largest selling model by the number of units sold and also amongst our top five selling models,’ said Himanshu Chakrawarti, CEO at The Mobile Store, India’s largest cellphone retail chain. Since the buyback offer, retailers said iPhone 4S sales have doubled in India.”
“During Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call last month,” Mukherjee reports, “Apple CEO Tim Cook said the impact of the iPhone 4 was minimal as the firm sold ‘a very low single-digit percentage of those’ in the quarter.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: R.I.P. iPhone 4. It’s time. That little single-core A4 and iOS 7 really didn’t get along very well. iPhone 4s, with its dual-core A5, is a much better introductory iPhone for the masses.
hmmmm
guess the bean counters strategy hasn’t worked out so well.
is apple on its way to becoming microsoft ll ?
losing its sense of vision ? remember what steve jobs said about when the sales guys take over ?
its big, rich and powerful but that ain’t enough.
we expect more, we expect innovation, elegance and beauty, but i am beginning to incline towards the notion that current leadership may not be equipped to deliver on that score.
i am bumming on my favorite brand and company and the directions it seems to be taking.
Come on, not another poster we’ve never heard of, doing the Apple leadership trope, only this time without the fire Tim B.S.
You claim Apple is a favorite of yours’ yet I’ve never seen a comment by you, and I come here every day. I may post only occasionally but most regulars here know me. I doubt that they know you.
So I’ll be taking your comment with a boulder of salt.
if you missed my earlier posts then perhaps you have not been paying close enough attention or have not had sufficient reason to disagree with me previously and therefore catch your eye or ire. on the other hand i an not a frequent poster.
that aside i am not certain that frequency of postage is much of a reason to base ones perception of credibility of the poster.
but just to catch you up i have been an mac user since starting with my SE30 in 1987 up to my current imac and have been yakking via iphones since they first came out.
even better, i loaded up on apple stock back when it was $10.00 per share, which has given me a very comfortable retirement nest egg and bought a nice house – basically for free, considering my original investment.
over that span i have seen apples fortunes wax and wane, and mine followed along with them and paid the irs one hell of a capital gains bill in the process, as i have sold off shares from time to time.
so , are you now more willing to take my comments with lots wife – which is to say a pillar of salt – rather than a boulder?
if not, oh, well ….
Fuck you asshole. There, there’s my opinion. My opinion of you. You don’t seem to understand that everyone has an opinion. And is free to express said opinion on this site. It isn’t owned by you or anyone else. Not fanboys or otherwise. You’re just another mindless lemming. You don’t know how to think for yourself and you have no objective view of anything in life. So fuck you.
READ MacDailyNews Take. It’s RIGHT ON!
“R.I.P. iPhone 4. It’s time. That little single-core A4 and iOS 7 really didn’t get along very well. iPhone 4s, with its dual-core A5, is a much better introductory iPhone for the masses.” Plus as a new iPhone is introduced, the 4s would logically replace the 4 anyway.
Iron those wrinkles out of you knickers kid…
then why not start out this strategy with the 4s instead of the 4 in the first place.
a poor choice on apples part.
Then there’s no upgrade path. With the iPhone 5 coming out, anything with the 3.5″ screen will feel and look like a budget phone. By dropping the 4, they can lower the price of the 4S when the 6 comes out to the price of the iPhone 4 without looking like they’re lowering prices for the sake of market share.
OMG!!! Apple is doomed! Doomed I say!!!
Ok, not really but the company is followed so closely that analyst would count how many times Cook uses the bathroom if they could. Lighten up
The doctor is clearly out, and never bothered to read mor than the headline.
The strategy used by Apple makes perfect sense, what we in the UK call ‘a sprat to catch a mackerel’; dangle something cheap in order to get the more valuable, in this case using the cheap iP4 to catch customers who will then be hooked into the Apple ecosystem and move up to more expensive products.
I can understand this, and I’m an idiot!
Dr screwloose clearly has an agenda, either that or he’s really, really stupid.
The reason is simple. I don’t think Apple technically “resumed production” on the iPhone 4. They had leftover inventory and parts to produce a few million more, without buying any more A4 chips (and other parts that are unique to the iPhone 4). That is what they sold in those markets at the lower price. Now, that inventory is gone, so Apple stops selling the iPhone 4. Don’t overthink it… 🙂
Wow MDN, you’ve been listening to the Apple haters too much. iOS runs fine, if not spectacularly, on my iPhone 4. Hopefully my finances will support my purchase of a new iPhone 6 when it arrives.
It runs fine now, but IOS 8 will be out, and then what? I’m sure Apple wants to stop supporting old hardware that can’t run all the cool new tech.
Good Take, MDN. I’m surprised Apple was generous enough to keep on manufacturing the iPhone 4, way past its useful life, since the 4S was clearly the better Entry iPhone. But whether that was a strategic decision or not, Apple’s business motto has always been about Pleasing The Customer. So, RIP iPhone 4. You Done Good.
Looks like BRIC county customers preferred to pay a little more for more current models..
I’m guessing this has more to do with iOS 8 than iOS7. Apple doesn’t want to be in the position of selling a new product that simply can’t run the (soon to be) current version of the system software. They needed a little lead time to clear out the distribution channels.
Apple should not waste resource trying to penetrate India, they can have Samsung. India is the wrong market for upscale apple
iPhone 4
Still the most beautiful smartphone ever built IMO.