INDIA- Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) The Cupertino giant’s iPhone 6S poorly organized pre-order strategy in India has backfired, as sales figures have indicated.
Apple had planned a seemingly complete pre-order strategy for the iPhone 6S in India, but apparently it has backfired due to the exorbitant price that went along. The company launched its product yesterday, but pre-orders had been available for a month before that.
Judging by last year’s figures, all trade partners expected that the number of pre-orders would be three times bigger than it is now. Instead of that, bookings increased only by a percentage of 10-15%.
This could be due to the fact that Indian consumers have a different concept than most consumers in the other parts of the world (such as the United States), as many of them are probably waiting for the online deals that will come after “Diwali” festival.
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In general, the Indian economy works also differently than other economies and if Apple really wants to gain the majority of Indian consumers – who incidentally fall into the mid-range category of consumers – then it has to rethink its strategy. However, fluctuating dollar prices and the cost-conscious mindset of the people will be difficult to change for the iPhone maker.
The Economic Times report that, in a weird way, the newer iPhones costs more than the last year’s models. In the mean time, Indian consumers are silently waiting to grab on to the lowest price after events like Dewali. However, their disappointment will be evident when it’s only going to be the older iPhone models which will likely be on sale.
The iPhone 6S launched in the Indian markets on October 16. The iPhone 6s (16GB) will start at INR62,000 ($955), the 64GB will go up at INR72,000 ($1109), and the 128GB will cost INR82,000 ($1263). Hypothetically, if we rely on the aforementioned pricing scheme, the 6S Plus model will go on sale for INR72,000 ($1109), INR82,000 ($1263), and INR92,000 ($1417) for the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB variants, respectively.
As mentioned before, Apple plans to work with Foxconn in order to make its phones in India instead of importing them, so that should help the prices drop a bit, but until then the company ought to show patience.
Source: Bidnessetc, Economics Times
Photo credit: iDownloadBlog
