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Why the iPhone can’t compete in India

71 points by atulg2 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
TL; DR iPhones are pricey. Not sure how to interpret this article. Apple has never been about market share; it’s about profit share. I saw no case made that India’s lower middle class is a better bet than China’s fast-growing or India’s growing middle classes.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Doesn’t there have to be a tipping point where you have enough market share to make your platform viable enough for developers to even bother selling in a certain area or to localize your app for that market? Second question (from complete ignorance on Indian culture), what does “localization” for the Indian market mean when there are at least 22 different languages there?
  - slededit 8y ago
    It's not about the size of the audience. It's about how much they pay for apps. iPhone apps consistently sell for higher amounts.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      That’s true. But there is still a tipping point. With even a 10% market share (making up a number just to make a point) of a market as large as the mobile market and iPhone users being more affluent, it makes sense not to ignore iOS users. On the other hand, MacOS could be around 10% of the much smaller PC market and if you had a limited budget, you could safely ignore the Mac market - even though Mac users are more affluent.
  - toast0 8y ago
    iPhone users are more attractive to developers than Android users because they're more likely to spend money in the app store. (This is an unobvious way that iPhones are even more expensive than the sticker price) Localization for India is complex. To start with, you need to use their national rupee symbol. But also, many devices in the region may not have any Indian languages, or may only have Hindi; so you may need to go beyond the system apis. Some users don't know how to find the system settings, or aspirationally want to use English, but aren't very fluent. Literacy in general is a challenge. English tech words are commonly used in everyday speech in other languages, so you may not want to translate them.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Literacy in general is a challenge Amongst the part of the population who can afford an iPhone?
      - toast0 8y ago
        Less literate people may not be very likely to buy an iPhone, but a relative may buy them one or give them an old one.
    - bena 8y ago
      > (This is an unobvious way that iPhones are even more expensive than the sticker price) That's like saying hiring locksmiths is pricier than buying a crowbar. Yeah, both will get you in doors, but one is a bit not legal.
      - izacus 8y ago
        A user opting for a free / cheaper / ad-supported app is not doing anything illegal or wrong. It's how free market works and benefits the consumer. Implying that not buying into a more expensive platform with more expensive software is illegal is just wrong.
        bena 8y ago
        I'm not implying that. I'm implying that a country where software piracy is rampant and 60% of all software is pirated that a platform in which pirating apps is easier would be more popular than one in which it is more difficult. This drives the price down for other apps because not only do you have to compete with free versions that may be worse, but free, you also have to compete with a free version of your own app because someone distributed it for free.
        izacus 8y ago
        Android is also a platform with significantly higher amount of free and opensource apps (with which you ALSO need to compete!) and TCO of such a phone is significantly lower. And yet you immediately jump to conclusion that everyone is doing something illegal.
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    The people in India who own an iPhone almost all read English perfectly.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      Can't speak for India, I'm a Romanian, but my father does not speak English and he owned an iPhone that he ditched due to poor or missing translations for some apps he wanted to use. He does have plenty of money to spend on crappy apps though, much more than your average teenager that's being spoiled by his parents. Just saying, countries like India are growing markets and when Apple will want to enter it, it will find it is already too late. Because smartphones are becoming cheap commodities, just like PCs before them and in the future the luxury items will no longer be smartphones.
      - thesauri 8y ago
        In India, the people who can afford an iPhone typically have pursued higher-level education. With almost all higher-level education being taught in English, iPhone owners will also likely be proficient in English.
        newen 8y ago
        Also most people, especially in the cities, who are middle-middle class or richer tend to send their kids to primary and secondary schools taught in english.
      - ggg9990 8y ago
        India is different from Romania
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - nmridul 8y ago
    'Localization' not just language customization. But also what locals want. - Dual SIM phones. Most people have multiple SIM, mostly prepaid and recharge them based on the cheapest offer. Incoming calls are free. So if a provider has better offer on outgoing calls, that sim is used that month for making calls and next month they use the other number. - SD card support. Best selling phones support this. People carry lots of movies and music with them, mostly pirated and takes lot of space. And you can normally buy SD cards pre-filled with popular songs and movies that you just insert into your phone when traveling. - 3.5 inch headphone jack. Yes, people need this. Bluetooth sets are costly.. $30 for bt headphone, compare that to a $100 xiaomi phone. - And of course, side loading of apps. Android allows this, iphone no. So you get apps from some one and just use it, without going to play store.
    - jorvi 8y ago
      > SD card support. Best selling phones support this. People carry lots of movies and music with them, mostly pirated and takes lot of space. And you can normally buy SD cards pre-filled with popular songs and movies that you just insert into your phone when traveling. With Android phones already being much less secure than iPhones (and doubly so because the cheaper Androids often run older versions) that seems like a terribly easy exploit vector.
      - newen 8y ago
        Now SD cards are a security vulnerability? You sound ridiculous.
        dingo_bat 8y ago
        Every feature that gives any sort of flexibility to the user is an attack vector for the lazy developer.
        newen 8y ago
        Yeah that's a great truism but using that as an argument against a feature doesn't help your case.
- narag 8y ago
  TL; DR iPhones are pricey. Not sure how to interpret this article. Apple has never been about market share There's a slightly more complex factor. Economics work differently in different countries. It's not that there are less rich persons, but that being rich is less expensive because goods in general are cheaper: housing, food, transportation, etc. If you sell an article at the same price in such a country, it's like selling an iPhone in USA for $4k. Even middle class can't afford it, or even if they can, they would choose to expend the money on something else with better value. In Spain we experience such an effect. We share the currency with our northern neighbourghs, but salaries are roughly half (guess what I'm doing next month). I own a €107 Xiaomi. I could buy an iPhone but I prefer to expend the (minimum config) 1159 - 107 € in better things: https://www.apple.com/es/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-x https://www.apple.com/es/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-x
  - widdershins 8y ago
    Sure, but none of that changes the margins Apple wants to make per phone, and the cost of manufacturing. Therefore I guess they just accept "we won't sell many phones in country X" because they want that sweet sweet margin.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    This isn't really specific to iPhones. Any goods traded on the international market which cost a similar amount (in absolute dollar terms) in any country will feel more expensive in purchasing power terms to people in poorer countries. This applies to Harley Davidson motorcycles (which I would guess are pretty rare in India) just as much as it applies in iPhones.
    - narag 8y ago
      It isn't specific to iPhones, why would it? Anyway any goods for which there are reasonable priced alternatives are specially sensible and are probably going to have extremely crappy sales. Also we're talking about phones, a common appliance, not a luxury item by itself, so the market share numbers will be ridiculous.
8675309t 8y ago
Steve used to be happy to "be Mercedes", not all the market share, but a household name and a synonym for high-end stuff.
HenryTheHorse 8y ago
Some anecdata based on my travels in the subcontinent in the past few years: 1. While younger consumers know about Apple (and know that it is a "superior" brand), the native Apple ecosystem has little meaning for Indian consumers. They are not on iTunes or iMessages or FaceTime. They don't have a cultural relationship with a Mac (or an iPod). 2. Google/Android got there first (2008). Xiaomi, Samsung have benefited from it. 3. The network (and its accompanying data plan) is the differentiator, not the hardware. Look how Reliance Jio exploded. 4. The wealthy/upwardly mobile love their iPhones. 5. There's a HUGE grey market for phones in India. There's also a big repair market. Both these factors probably affect new handset sales?
- shabda 8y ago
  > 5. There's a HUGE grey market for phones in India. I don't think this it true anymore. Brand name Android flagships are available for $150-$200. On the lower end, Jio along with data plan for one year costs $50. There is no price point for Grey market anymore.
  - HenryTheHorse 8y ago
    I should correct my earlier statement: there appears to be a huge "used-phone" market in India. Purely my observation that there seemed to be a lot more older phones in circulation (both Android and Apple).
    - balladeer 8y ago
      > a huge "used-phone" market in India Nope. Not anymore. It was in early days of iPhone coming to India. Now users just go for a new iPhone or an excellent Android phone usually at a much lower price.
- azangru 8y ago
  > (and know that it is a "superior" brand) Does this mean that people who buy e.g. Samsungs do so mainly because they cannot afford iPhones? (I know that I didn't, but that doesn't count.)
jordache 8y ago
>The first is the bigger screen size, which is important when the smartphone is the only Internet-connected device you own, which is often the case in India. Second, is the fact that if you put your iPhone 6 in a case — which almost everyone does with their precious smartphone — it can basically pass off as an iPhone 8 at first glance.. Annoying assertions by the author. Typical tech "journalism"
jackhack 8y ago
thus the rise of the $100 counterfeit iphone which is actually a rather clever facade on top of an android: https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counterfeit-iphone-x-review-and-teardown https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counte...
scarface74 8y ago
Why is the iPhone X over 4 times as expensive as the SE in India and only 3x as expensive in the US? Is Apple even trying?
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It says the SE and 6S are available at $300 in India, whereas they're $349/$449 here in the US. Sounds like Apple's willing to take less profit on the low-end in exchange for market share, but is assuming anyone who can pay $1000 for a phone isn't anywhere near as price-sensitive.
  - simonh 8y ago
    Import taxes in India are punitive, the article goes into this and it looks like Apple is doing in-country assembly in India for some models because of this.
- personlurking 8y ago
  The following doesn't answer your question but you may find it interesting to look at. https://i.imgur.com/fSRHAJX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/fSRHAJX.jpg (Price of an iPhone in working days across the world) Source: Here's how long you have to work around the world to afford an iPhone X https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/stories/8-heres-how-long-you-have-to-work-around-the-world-to-afford-an-iphone-x/ https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/stories/8-...
tough_luck 8y ago
Here are my reasons to not own an iPhone as an Indian consumer It is lot pricier. Same app on iTunes costs more than play store. It is more restrictive in functioning. I'm someone who always roots my phone asap. There are really good alternatives from Xiaomi and OnePlus.
- bena 8y ago
  > I'm someone who always roots my phone asap. Why? Specifically why. Not a vague answer of "customization", but a specific use that cannot be achieved via other means.
  - post_break 8y ago
    I'm not OP but I would root to get my battery life back, delete preinstalled apps.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    To inject virtual input using standard linux filesystem protocols and mirror the screen to my Vive HMD so I can stay connected to friends and family during time spent in VR, but that's impossible without rooting, and my phone is not rootable, so screw me I guess
    - bena 8y ago
      Do you literally spend that much time in VR that you can't put it down to take a call or send a message? Or do you need to be in contact that much that you can't be without them for the whatever time you spend in VR? I don't have an issue with simply "I'd like to mirror the screen to my Vive". The rest reads like a rationalization so I won't say "whoop de shit". It's a shame that the makers of the Vive don't include something like that.
      - mrguyorama 8y ago
        HTC built an app that supposedly mirrors some text messages or something? But it doesn't seem to work for me. When I take the time to get into VR, I tend to spend several hours playing various games and getting the most out of it. And I would prefer if I didn't have to shut out the world just to play a video game. Same reason I'm also looking into solutions to add some sort of discord connection. Basically I'd like to be able to play video games without putting friends on the back burner.
hashedout 8y ago
The units that Apple moves in India is still significant but the population being so large, the "market share" is very low due to pricey hardware. Apple is not a lesser known brand in India, in Metro and even small cities, people do use Apple products but the middle class and lower economy people can't afford such an expensive phone. This is the reason why Xiaomi, Moto, Lenovo have taken over big names such as Samsung in terms of market share. Most people who buy iPhones in India do not care about the ecosystem that Apple offers, it's just a status symbol to them. In fact most of the population doesn't care about the ecosystem that a device offers, they just want a bang for their buck.
- m23khan 8y ago
  excellent comment!
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > the "market share" is very low The one chart in this article measures market share by units sold. So five $20 phones would have more "market share" than one $300 phone, which seems silly from a commercial perspective.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Unit market share is useful for some things, revenue market share is useful for others. If you wanted to talk about how solid iMessage is as a platform, maybe for the relative value of selling sticker packs and other iMessage tie-ins designed for the Indian market versus doing something cross platform or on Android, you might be interested in knowing how many users there are in each camp. On the other hand, the people buying $20 phones might be less likely to spend $1 on your app than the people buying $300 phones, so unit market share doesn't tell the whole story either. Any attempt to boil the whole thing down to one number is going to have shortcomings, but it's still useful to look at the numbers as long as you keep them in mind.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
post_break 8y ago
Something I learned from this, iPhones from Dubai do not have Facetime. That's pretty interesting in itself.
- potlee 8y ago
  I hope you know that Dubai is not in India
  - post_break 8y ago
    I do know that. But people from India fly to Dubai to purchase iPhones because they are cheaper than that. Apple even offers support for these phones but they warn people that Dubai iPhones do not have facetime.
- taobility 8y ago
  The first iPhone sold in China has disabled WIFI/Youtube as well.
nabla9 8y ago
It's estimated that Apple has 588 million users and there are 1 billion active Apple devices. Average Apple user owns owns 1.7 devices. https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-estimates-588-million-apple-users-2016-4?r=US&IR=T&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-estimates-588-... Assuming that growing income equality is lasting megatrend in both developed and developing world, brand that targets only customers who can afford premium hardware and services can be extremely profitable and provide growth without competing with market share in other segments. edit: billion typo
- diegorbaquero 8y ago
  It's millions, not billions, though
- ksec 8y ago
  That is an old, and likely inaccurate estimate at the time if I remember correctly. Latest estimate from Benedict Evans and Horace Dediu put iPhone users past 700M and growing. Or over 1 Billion active iOS devices including iPad.
ythn 8y ago
This seems like common sense. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2010. Eventually I realized I only used my laptop for internet-related tasks, mainly when I was traveling or in my living room (instead of my office). After my MBP's battery degraded and I had to replace the hard drive cable I threw in the towel and bought a Chromebook for less than 1/10 the cost of the MBP. Not only has the Chromebook lasted longer (more years) than the MBP, I've never had a single maintenance issue with it, and it serves my needs just as well as the MBP, if not better. So the question is, why pay 10x the price for power and features you will barely even use or notice? I could buy a stack of 10 Chromebooks for the price of 1 MBP, which, at the current rate, would last me 50 years. Same goes for smartphones. I can buy a stack of five Nokia 6 phones for the price of 1 iPhone. This is a no brainer for financially sensitive people.
- clay_the_ripper 8y ago
  It sounds like for your use case the chrome book is a better option. For my use case (creative professional doing lots of video editing) the mbp is the better option. One client project pays the cost of the MacBook and then some. My point is, everyone has different use cases. To you, it’s a ripoff. To me, it’s indispensable. So to answer your question of why anyone would pay for a mbp, it’s because it fits their use case.
  - ythn 8y ago
    Yeah, and my point was that your use case is the minority compared to the average user, and when you scale up my use case to billions of people, like the article says, it's not a viable.
- acheron 8y ago
  Well, like all Google products, you’re paying with your privacy instead of money. I guess privacy is only for people who aren’t “financially sensitive” now.
  - nuclearburrito 8y ago
    Android is a privacy sink. The second you log in, you've literally turned on the data tap for Google to snarf up everything you've got. Everything is tracked, profiles created, data sold, everything. Apple does not do this, and if they do, I cannot detect it.
deleted 8y ago
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m23khan 8y ago
lol, simple: iPhones can't compete in any poor / non-rich country. I am sure there maybe exceptions but as a norm, they won't be able to. And that is fine, I respect Apple for that - their quality and user experience is unparalleled in my opinion (NOTE: I don't own a iPhone myself).
- evol262 8y ago
  Counterpoint from someone who actually does own an iPhone after being on Android for years (and I only have an iPhone now because I dropped my Pixel 2, and Fi is taking a long time to send an replacement) -- no, it isn't unparalleled. The long press/longer press mechanism for removing/moving applications is incredibly unintuitive, and there's no reliable mechanism to figure out which apps do and don't support this. Swathes of bluetooth problems on an iPhone 8 (and previously, an iPhone 7). If you have airpods, this is probably fine, but they're not appropriate for the gym work I do. It's unacceptable to need to turn bluetooth on the phone off/on in order for the phone to actually pipe audio to a connected bluetooth device. My iPhone 7 overheated while sitting on my desk and bootlooped. Apple's response? "Time to buy an iPhone 8" The well-known performance degradation on older batteries to force people onto the upgrade treadmill, because the iPhone 7/8 are not fundamentally different from the 5S/6 in any way, and users weren't upgrading fast enough. There's no other explanation for Apple's behavior. The "back" button hidden in the upper left corner (assuming the application supports it) don't close tabs in either Safari or Chrome. If you're reading Github pull request from your email and press back, the tab stays. Then you open Chrome and there are 50 tabs open for no reason. Buying Kindle books is a 4 step process because Apple doesn't allow Amazon to sell products because :reasons: Digging through 5 different alerting frameworks to get IRC messages forwarded which actually notify, since Pushbullet, Prowl, and friends have apparently not worked correctly after some API changes in IO9 or 10. If you're heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, all of this is probably fine. But if you're not, it's death by 1000 cuts, and it's not even a little bit of an intuitive or even good user experience. My honest opinion is that it's Stockholm syndrome. Android has warts. iOS definitely has warts. Neither is perfect. But I'm tired of seeing people trot out how great the user experience on iOS is.
  - 8y ago
type-2 8y ago
anecdotal, but in my college in india every other kid has a iphone.
logrott 8y ago
I bought a $180 Xiaomi Redmi 5 and I was surprised that it opened apps faster than the iPhone 8 Plus. Apple better be careful because low-mid range phones are catching up.
known 8y ago
97% people in India are poor by global standards http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://archive.li/voaLr http://archive.li/voaLr
- wornohaulus 8y ago
  Ok. but poor people in India have poor Indian expenses I guess. and everything that releases globally comes to India on the same day. speaking as one of those poor Indians. At the end of the day.. it is better to be relatively well off in a poor country than to be relatively poor in a well rich country.. for me. personally !! ymmv.
coldtea 8y ago
Well, because, to quote Russel Peters "Indians are cheap" [1]. Not meant in a bad way, they probably just aren't as much for conspicuous consumption like e.g. the US or Chinese middle class is. And if you can 99% of the stuff with a cheaper Android phone, why go iPhone? The iPhone doesn't buy you anything you can't do -- it just adds some luxuries and niceties to the experience (provided you're not a tinkerer). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0
calvinbhai 8y ago
This article covers many aspects like Maps, Dual Sims, Price etc but leaves out two glaring issues: Language and Apple Store. iOS is way far behind Android in terms of supporting different keyboard dictionaries and transliteration support for many different Indian languages and scripts. This has certainly improved with iOS 11, and gets a little better with iOS 12, but it is still not enough. Siri works only in English, so this is just not attractive enough for most Indians (Alexa is doing way better in this aspect, in India). App Store shows apps based in India as a region, and not by language setting. This problem is very specific to India, since there aren't many regions supported by iOS which contain so many different languages with different scripts. Add to that, the lack of focus on localization for most of the iOS apps, the target audience ends up being the tiny sliver An another issue with iPhone sales in India: New iPhones are not sold in India the same day they are released in the US. So many of those who can afford to pay a premium, will get one from a cousin/friend/colleague who is travelling from the US. Add to that, if this person returning to India is in Delaware area, then the tax savings can be significant. So the die hard iPhone fans and those who want to be seen with the latest iPhones, will have one even before the iPhone is officially launched in India. This certainly dents the numbers in the first quarter after the iPhones are released in India. With no Apple Store presence, it just is not as easy to sell iPhones as it is in the countries which have Apple Stores. If Apple and India figure out whatever local sourcing regulations w.r.t FDI are involved, Apple's primary source of hypnotizing it's customers with wow, can have a presence in India. IMO, Apple has a great potential if they can come up with * Excellent Indian language support, * usable Maps (including places and POI info), * Siri in India languages, * Localized App Store with encouragement for apps that are highly localized for India * At least 4 - 6 Apple Stores to start with (right now it is zero) Now Apple can take its own sweet time to figure out its strategy, but Samsung is not waiting. Having lost its lead to chines phone makers (oppo, vivo, xiaomi, huawei), they have started working on the largest mobile device manufacturing unit in India that’ll build even the latest Samsung phones (unlike Apple building a 3 yield phone). This will give Samsung unprecedented advantage over Apple in terms of pricing due to favorable tax rates for local manufacturing. Price is certainly a hurdle for anyone looking to get 80-90% of the market. But for Apple, it is leaving money on the table by not addressing the points I have mentioned.
ksec 8y ago
It isn't about Apps ecosystem, languages barrier, Network, Apple Retail or Services like iTunes and iMessages, or even a cultural relationship with a Apple, all these as people have suggested. Did Apple had any of that in China when they start? Name me a developing country, and as IMF put it "Newly industrialized countries", which Apple is in top 5 market shares? Apart from China, there isn't one. And the answer is simple. They cant afford it. The majority of them cant afford it. The saving before spending culture in most part of the world, compared to the borrowing and spending culture in US. Then there is the 2nd hand market question, which used to work very well for Apple, but now the trade in price has fallen a lot in terms of percentage compared to 4 - 5 years ago. And it was part of what drove the Chinese adoption. The Chinese is special in that they have a culture of chasing luxury brands, much more so on a per capita / income basis then any other country on earth. That is why all luxury brand are going in to make money. From my limited knowledge it doesn't seems the Indian has similar crave for luxury brands. They have a more price / performance culture. In other to change that, they will need some bloggers, media or other type of communication to tell them "why" it is better. The design, the hardware, the software. A lot of these "education" will need to take place now, and once their GDP or personal income rises, there will be an ever increasing amount of customer able to afford and iPhone.
NoB4Mouth 8y ago
Read [The Apple Revolution] by Luke Dormehl & you'll know who Apple is interested in. The Author alleged in the book that one day Steve Jobs ordered a survey from a company about its products and brand.The contractors got among others some samples of people living in the low-income US suburbs' communities and interviewed them. It's reported that when Steve got told in about it, he refused to pay the R&D company. "I ain't pay them...Who asked them to go there?" He reportedly told one of Apple staff? I'm sure the current Apple's leadership is still sticking to that line... Apple is waiting for India, Africa, Latin America... to emerge and have a stable class of insanely rich people. Chinese government backed companies know it. That's why they are flooding those markets with their cheap "spying phones".
readhn 8y ago
> Why the iPhone can’t compete in India Simple: iPhone X 256GB cost in usa $1150 The median household income in the United States is $56,516, according to 2015 data from the U.S. Census. Thus saving $200/month average family can buy iPhone X in 6months (which is still a lot of money for many and honestly lower budget consumers are not exactly Apple's target audience). iPhone X 256GB cost in india $1600 The median household income in India is <$3000 (estimated). In india a family has to work for 10 months saving 100% of income to buy iPhone X.... Dont need Harvard degree to figure out why it doesnt sell there...

71 points by atulg2 8y ago

TL; DR iPhones are pricey. Not sure how to interpret this article. Apple has never been about market share; it’s about profit share. I saw no case made that India’s lower middle class is a better bet than China’s fast-growing or India’s growing middle classes.

scarface74 8y ago
Doesn’t there have to be a tipping point where you have enough market share to make your platform viable enough for developers to even bother selling in a certain area or to localize your app for that market? Second question (from complete ignorance on Indian culture), what does “localization” for the Indian market mean when there are at least 22 different languages there?
- slededit 8y ago
  It's not about the size of the audience. It's about how much they pay for apps. iPhone apps consistently sell for higher amounts.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    That’s true. But there is still a tipping point. With even a 10% market share (making up a number just to make a point) of a market as large as the mobile market and iPhone users being more affluent, it makes sense not to ignore iOS users. On the other hand, MacOS could be around 10% of the much smaller PC market and if you had a limited budget, you could safely ignore the Mac market - even though Mac users are more affluent.
- toast0 8y ago
  iPhone users are more attractive to developers than Android users because they're more likely to spend money in the app store. (This is an unobvious way that iPhones are even more expensive than the sticker price) Localization for India is complex. To start with, you need to use their national rupee symbol. But also, many devices in the region may not have any Indian languages, or may only have Hindi; so you may need to go beyond the system apis. Some users don't know how to find the system settings, or aspirationally want to use English, but aren't very fluent. Literacy in general is a challenge. English tech words are commonly used in everyday speech in other languages, so you may not want to translate them.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Literacy in general is a challenge Amongst the part of the population who can afford an iPhone?
    - toast0 8y ago
      Less literate people may not be very likely to buy an iPhone, but a relative may buy them one or give them an old one.
  - bena 8y ago
    > (This is an unobvious way that iPhones are even more expensive than the sticker price) That's like saying hiring locksmiths is pricier than buying a crowbar. Yeah, both will get you in doors, but one is a bit not legal.
    - izacus 8y ago
      A user opting for a free / cheaper / ad-supported app is not doing anything illegal or wrong. It's how free market works and benefits the consumer. Implying that not buying into a more expensive platform with more expensive software is illegal is just wrong.
      - bena 8y ago
        I'm not implying that. I'm implying that a country where software piracy is rampant and 60% of all software is pirated that a platform in which pirating apps is easier would be more popular than one in which it is more difficult. This drives the price down for other apps because not only do you have to compete with free versions that may be worse, but free, you also have to compete with a free version of your own app because someone distributed it for free.
        izacus 8y ago
        Android is also a platform with significantly higher amount of free and opensource apps (with which you ALSO need to compete!) and TCO of such a phone is significantly lower. And yet you immediately jump to conclusion that everyone is doing something illegal.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  The people in India who own an iPhone almost all read English perfectly.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    Can't speak for India, I'm a Romanian, but my father does not speak English and he owned an iPhone that he ditched due to poor or missing translations for some apps he wanted to use. He does have plenty of money to spend on crappy apps though, much more than your average teenager that's being spoiled by his parents. Just saying, countries like India are growing markets and when Apple will want to enter it, it will find it is already too late. Because smartphones are becoming cheap commodities, just like PCs before them and in the future the luxury items will no longer be smartphones.
    - thesauri 8y ago
      In India, the people who can afford an iPhone typically have pursued higher-level education. With almost all higher-level education being taught in English, iPhone owners will also likely be proficient in English.
      - newen 8y ago
        Also most people, especially in the cities, who are middle-middle class or richer tend to send their kids to primary and secondary schools taught in english.
    - ggg9990 8y ago
      India is different from Romania
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- nmridul 8y ago
  'Localization' not just language customization. But also what locals want. - Dual SIM phones. Most people have multiple SIM, mostly prepaid and recharge them based on the cheapest offer. Incoming calls are free. So if a provider has better offer on outgoing calls, that sim is used that month for making calls and next month they use the other number. - SD card support. Best selling phones support this. People carry lots of movies and music with them, mostly pirated and takes lot of space. And you can normally buy SD cards pre-filled with popular songs and movies that you just insert into your phone when traveling. - 3.5 inch headphone jack. Yes, people need this. Bluetooth sets are costly.. $30 for bt headphone, compare that to a $100 xiaomi phone. - And of course, side loading of apps. Android allows this, iphone no. So you get apps from some one and just use it, without going to play store.
  - jorvi 8y ago
    > SD card support. Best selling phones support this. People carry lots of movies and music with them, mostly pirated and takes lot of space. And you can normally buy SD cards pre-filled with popular songs and movies that you just insert into your phone when traveling. With Android phones already being much less secure than iPhones (and doubly so because the cheaper Androids often run older versions) that seems like a terribly easy exploit vector.
    - newen 8y ago
      Now SD cards are a security vulnerability? You sound ridiculous.
      - dingo_bat 8y ago
        Every feature that gives any sort of flexibility to the user is an attack vector for the lazy developer.
        newen 8y ago
        Yeah that's a great truism but using that as an argument against a feature doesn't help your case.
narag 8y ago
TL; DR iPhones are pricey. Not sure how to interpret this article. Apple has never been about market share There's a slightly more complex factor. Economics work differently in different countries. It's not that there are less rich persons, but that being rich is less expensive because goods in general are cheaper: housing, food, transportation, etc. If you sell an article at the same price in such a country, it's like selling an iPhone in USA for $4k. Even middle class can't afford it, or even if they can, they would choose to expend the money on something else with better value. In Spain we experience such an effect. We share the currency with our northern neighbourghs, but salaries are roughly half (guess what I'm doing next month). I own a €107 Xiaomi. I could buy an iPhone but I prefer to expend the (minimum config) 1159 - 107 € in better things: https://www.apple.com/es/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-x https://www.apple.com/es/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-x
- widdershins 8y ago
  Sure, but none of that changes the margins Apple wants to make per phone, and the cost of manufacturing. Therefore I guess they just accept "we won't sell many phones in country X" because they want that sweet sweet margin.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  This isn't really specific to iPhones. Any goods traded on the international market which cost a similar amount (in absolute dollar terms) in any country will feel more expensive in purchasing power terms to people in poorer countries. This applies to Harley Davidson motorcycles (which I would guess are pretty rare in India) just as much as it applies in iPhones.
  - narag 8y ago
    It isn't specific to iPhones, why would it? Anyway any goods for which there are reasonable priced alternatives are specially sensible and are probably going to have extremely crappy sales. Also we're talking about phones, a common appliance, not a luxury item by itself, so the market share numbers will be ridiculous.

8675309t 8y ago

Steve used to be happy to "be Mercedes", not all the market share, but a household name and a synonym for high-end stuff.

HenryTheHorse 8y ago

Some anecdata based on my travels in the subcontinent in the past few years: 1. While younger consumers know about Apple (and know that it is a "superior" brand), the native Apple ecosystem has little meaning for Indian consumers. They are not on iTunes or iMessages or FaceTime. They don't have a cultural relationship with a Mac (or an iPod). 2. Google/Android got there first (2008). Xiaomi, Samsung have benefited from it. 3. The network (and its accompanying data plan) is the differentiator, not the hardware. Look how Reliance Jio exploded. 4. The wealthy/upwardly mobile love their iPhones. 5. There's a HUGE grey market for phones in India. There's also a big repair market. Both these factors probably affect new handset sales?

shabda 8y ago
> 5. There's a HUGE grey market for phones in India. I don't think this it true anymore. Brand name Android flagships are available for $150-$200. On the lower end, Jio along with data plan for one year costs $50. There is no price point for Grey market anymore.
- HenryTheHorse 8y ago
  I should correct my earlier statement: there appears to be a huge "used-phone" market in India. Purely my observation that there seemed to be a lot more older phones in circulation (both Android and Apple).
  - balladeer 8y ago
    > a huge "used-phone" market in India Nope. Not anymore. It was in early days of iPhone coming to India. Now users just go for a new iPhone or an excellent Android phone usually at a much lower price.
azangru 8y ago
> (and know that it is a "superior" brand) Does this mean that people who buy e.g. Samsungs do so mainly because they cannot afford iPhones? (I know that I didn't, but that doesn't count.)

jordache 8y ago

>The first is the bigger screen size, which is important when the smartphone is the only Internet-connected device you own, which is often the case in India. Second, is the fact that if you put your iPhone 6 in a case — which almost everyone does with their precious smartphone — it can basically pass off as an iPhone 8 at first glance.. Annoying assertions by the author. Typical tech "journalism"

jackhack 8y ago

thus the rise of the $100 counterfeit iphone which is actually a rather clever facade on top of an android: https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counterfeit-iphone-x-review-and-teardown https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counte...

scarface74 8y ago

Why is the iPhone X over 4 times as expensive as the SE in India and only 3x as expensive in the US? Is Apple even trying?

ceejayoz 8y ago
It says the SE and 6S are available at $300 in India, whereas they're $349/$449 here in the US. Sounds like Apple's willing to take less profit on the low-end in exchange for market share, but is assuming anyone who can pay $1000 for a phone isn't anywhere near as price-sensitive.
- simonh 8y ago
  Import taxes in India are punitive, the article goes into this and it looks like Apple is doing in-country assembly in India for some models because of this.
personlurking 8y ago
The following doesn't answer your question but you may find it interesting to look at. https://i.imgur.com/fSRHAJX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/fSRHAJX.jpg (Price of an iPhone in working days across the world) Source: Here's how long you have to work around the world to afford an iPhone X https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/stories/8-heres-how-long-you-have-to-work-around-the-world-to-afford-an-iphone-x/ https://www.ubs.com/microsites/prices-earnings/en/stories/8-...

tough_luck 8y ago

Here are my reasons to not own an iPhone as an Indian consumer It is lot pricier. Same app on iTunes costs more than play store. It is more restrictive in functioning. I'm someone who always roots my phone asap. There are really good alternatives from Xiaomi and OnePlus.

bena 8y ago
> I'm someone who always roots my phone asap. Why? Specifically why. Not a vague answer of "customization", but a specific use that cannot be achieved via other means.
- post_break 8y ago
  I'm not OP but I would root to get my battery life back, delete preinstalled apps.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  To inject virtual input using standard linux filesystem protocols and mirror the screen to my Vive HMD so I can stay connected to friends and family during time spent in VR, but that's impossible without rooting, and my phone is not rootable, so screw me I guess
  - bena 8y ago
    Do you literally spend that much time in VR that you can't put it down to take a call or send a message? Or do you need to be in contact that much that you can't be without them for the whatever time you spend in VR? I don't have an issue with simply "I'd like to mirror the screen to my Vive". The rest reads like a rationalization so I won't say "whoop de shit". It's a shame that the makers of the Vive don't include something like that.
    - mrguyorama 8y ago
      HTC built an app that supposedly mirrors some text messages or something? But it doesn't seem to work for me. When I take the time to get into VR, I tend to spend several hours playing various games and getting the most out of it. And I would prefer if I didn't have to shut out the world just to play a video game. Same reason I'm also looking into solutions to add some sort of discord connection. Basically I'd like to be able to play video games without putting friends on the back burner.

hashedout 8y ago

The units that Apple moves in India is still significant but the population being so large, the "market share" is very low due to pricey hardware. Apple is not a lesser known brand in India, in Metro and even small cities, people do use Apple products but the middle class and lower economy people can't afford such an expensive phone. This is the reason why Xiaomi, Moto, Lenovo have taken over big names such as Samsung in terms of market share. Most people who buy iPhones in India do not care about the ecosystem that Apple offers, it's just a status symbol to them. In fact most of the population doesn't care about the ecosystem that a device offers, they just want a bang for their buck.

m23khan 8y ago
excellent comment!
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the "market share" is very low The one chart in this article measures market share by units sold. So five $20 phones would have more "market share" than one $300 phone, which seems silly from a commercial perspective.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Unit market share is useful for some things, revenue market share is useful for others. If you wanted to talk about how solid iMessage is as a platform, maybe for the relative value of selling sticker packs and other iMessage tie-ins designed for the Indian market versus doing something cross platform or on Android, you might be interested in knowing how many users there are in each camp. On the other hand, the people buying $20 phones might be less likely to spend $1 on your app than the people buying $300 phones, so unit market share doesn't tell the whole story either. Any attempt to boil the whole thing down to one number is going to have shortcomings, but it's still useful to look at the numbers as long as you keep them in mind.
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post_break 8y ago

Something I learned from this, iPhones from Dubai do not have Facetime. That's pretty interesting in itself.

potlee 8y ago
I hope you know that Dubai is not in India
- post_break 8y ago
  I do know that. But people from India fly to Dubai to purchase iPhones because they are cheaper than that. Apple even offers support for these phones but they warn people that Dubai iPhones do not have facetime.
taobility 8y ago
The first iPhone sold in China has disabled WIFI/Youtube as well.

nabla9 8y ago

It's estimated that Apple has 588 million users and there are 1 billion active Apple devices. Average Apple user owns owns 1.7 devices. https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-estimates-588-million-apple-users-2016-4?r=US&IR=T&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-estimates-588-... Assuming that growing income equality is lasting megatrend in both developed and developing world, brand that targets only customers who can afford premium hardware and services can be extremely profitable and provide growth without competing with market share in other segments. edit: billion typo

diegorbaquero 8y ago
It's millions, not billions, though
ksec 8y ago
That is an old, and likely inaccurate estimate at the time if I remember correctly. Latest estimate from Benedict Evans and Horace Dediu put iPhone users past 700M and growing. Or over 1 Billion active iOS devices including iPad.

ythn 8y ago

This seems like common sense. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2010. Eventually I realized I only used my laptop for internet-related tasks, mainly when I was traveling or in my living room (instead of my office). After my MBP's battery degraded and I had to replace the hard drive cable I threw in the towel and bought a Chromebook for less than 1/10 the cost of the MBP. Not only has the Chromebook lasted longer (more years) than the MBP, I've never had a single maintenance issue with it, and it serves my needs just as well as the MBP, if not better. So the question is, why pay 10x the price for power and features you will barely even use or notice? I could buy a stack of 10 Chromebooks for the price of 1 MBP, which, at the current rate, would last me 50 years. Same goes for smartphones. I can buy a stack of five Nokia 6 phones for the price of 1 iPhone. This is a no brainer for financially sensitive people.

clay_the_ripper 8y ago
It sounds like for your use case the chrome book is a better option. For my use case (creative professional doing lots of video editing) the mbp is the better option. One client project pays the cost of the MacBook and then some. My point is, everyone has different use cases. To you, it’s a ripoff. To me, it’s indispensable. So to answer your question of why anyone would pay for a mbp, it’s because it fits their use case.
- ythn 8y ago
  Yeah, and my point was that your use case is the minority compared to the average user, and when you scale up my use case to billions of people, like the article says, it's not a viable.
acheron 8y ago
Well, like all Google products, you’re paying with your privacy instead of money. I guess privacy is only for people who aren’t “financially sensitive” now.
- nuclearburrito 8y ago
  Android is a privacy sink. The second you log in, you've literally turned on the data tap for Google to snarf up everything you've got. Everything is tracked, profiles created, data sold, everything. Apple does not do this, and if they do, I cannot detect it.

deleted 8y ago

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m23khan 8y ago

lol, simple: iPhones can't compete in any poor / non-rich country. I am sure there maybe exceptions but as a norm, they won't be able to. And that is fine, I respect Apple for that - their quality and user experience is unparalleled in my opinion (NOTE: I don't own a iPhone myself).

evol262 8y ago
Counterpoint from someone who actually does own an iPhone after being on Android for years (and I only have an iPhone now because I dropped my Pixel 2, and Fi is taking a long time to send an replacement) -- no, it isn't unparalleled. The long press/longer press mechanism for removing/moving applications is incredibly unintuitive, and there's no reliable mechanism to figure out which apps do and don't support this. Swathes of bluetooth problems on an iPhone 8 (and previously, an iPhone 7). If you have airpods, this is probably fine, but they're not appropriate for the gym work I do. It's unacceptable to need to turn bluetooth on the phone off/on in order for the phone to actually pipe audio to a connected bluetooth device. My iPhone 7 overheated while sitting on my desk and bootlooped. Apple's response? "Time to buy an iPhone 8" The well-known performance degradation on older batteries to force people onto the upgrade treadmill, because the iPhone 7/8 are not fundamentally different from the 5S/6 in any way, and users weren't upgrading fast enough. There's no other explanation for Apple's behavior. The "back" button hidden in the upper left corner (assuming the application supports it) don't close tabs in either Safari or Chrome. If you're reading Github pull request from your email and press back, the tab stays. Then you open Chrome and there are 50 tabs open for no reason. Buying Kindle books is a 4 step process because Apple doesn't allow Amazon to sell products because :reasons: Digging through 5 different alerting frameworks to get IRC messages forwarded which actually notify, since Pushbullet, Prowl, and friends have apparently not worked correctly after some API changes in IO9 or 10. If you're heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, all of this is probably fine. But if you're not, it's death by 1000 cuts, and it's not even a little bit of an intuitive or even good user experience. My honest opinion is that it's Stockholm syndrome. Android has warts. iOS definitely has warts. Neither is perfect. But I'm tired of seeing people trot out how great the user experience on iOS is.
- 8y ago

type-2 8y ago

anecdotal, but in my college in india every other kid has a iphone.

logrott 8y ago

I bought a $180 Xiaomi Redmi 5 and I was surprised that it opened apps faster than the iPhone 8 Plus. Apple better be careful because low-mid range phones are catching up.

known 8y ago

97% people in India are poor by global standards http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://archive.li/voaLr http://archive.li/voaLr

wornohaulus 8y ago
Ok. but poor people in India have poor Indian expenses I guess. and everything that releases globally comes to India on the same day. speaking as one of those poor Indians. At the end of the day.. it is better to be relatively well off in a poor country than to be relatively poor in a well rich country.. for me. personally !! ymmv.

coldtea 8y ago

Well, because, to quote Russel Peters "Indians are cheap" [1]. Not meant in a bad way, they probably just aren't as much for conspicuous consumption like e.g. the US or Chinese middle class is. And if you can 99% of the stuff with a cheaper Android phone, why go iPhone? The iPhone doesn't buy you anything you can't do -- it just adds some luxuries and niceties to the experience (provided you're not a tinkerer). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0

calvinbhai 8y ago

This article covers many aspects like Maps, Dual Sims, Price etc but leaves out two glaring issues: Language and Apple Store. iOS is way far behind Android in terms of supporting different keyboard dictionaries and transliteration support for many different Indian languages and scripts. This has certainly improved with iOS 11, and gets a little better with iOS 12, but it is still not enough. Siri works only in English, so this is just not attractive enough for most Indians (Alexa is doing way better in this aspect, in India). App Store shows apps based in India as a region, and not by language setting. This problem is very specific to India, since there aren't many regions supported by iOS which contain so many different languages with different scripts. Add to that, the lack of focus on localization for most of the iOS apps, the target audience ends up being the tiny sliver An another issue with iPhone sales in India: New iPhones are not sold in India the same day they are released in the US. So many of those who can afford to pay a premium, will get one from a cousin/friend/colleague who is travelling from the US. Add to that, if this person returning to India is in Delaware area, then the tax savings can be significant. So the die hard iPhone fans and those who want to be seen with the latest iPhones, will have one even before the iPhone is officially launched in India. This certainly dents the numbers in the first quarter after the iPhones are released in India. With no Apple Store presence, it just is not as easy to sell iPhones as it is in the countries which have Apple Stores. If Apple and India figure out whatever local sourcing regulations w.r.t FDI are involved, Apple's primary source of hypnotizing it's customers with wow, can have a presence in India. IMO, Apple has a great potential if they can come up with * Excellent Indian language support, * usable Maps (including places and POI info), * Siri in India languages, * Localized App Store with encouragement for apps that are highly localized for India * At least 4 - 6 Apple Stores to start with (right now it is zero) Now Apple can take its own sweet time to figure out its strategy, but Samsung is not waiting. Having lost its lead to chines phone makers (oppo, vivo, xiaomi, huawei), they have started working on the largest mobile device manufacturing unit in India that’ll build even the latest Samsung phones (unlike Apple building a 3 yield phone). This will give Samsung unprecedented advantage over Apple in terms of pricing due to favorable tax rates for local manufacturing. Price is certainly a hurdle for anyone looking to get 80-90% of the market. But for Apple, it is leaving money on the table by not addressing the points I have mentioned.

ksec 8y ago

It isn't about Apps ecosystem, languages barrier, Network, Apple Retail or Services like iTunes and iMessages, or even a cultural relationship with a Apple, all these as people have suggested. Did Apple had any of that in China when they start? Name me a developing country, and as IMF put it "Newly industrialized countries", which Apple is in top 5 market shares? Apart from China, there isn't one. And the answer is simple. They cant afford it. The majority of them cant afford it. The saving before spending culture in most part of the world, compared to the borrowing and spending culture in US. Then there is the 2nd hand market question, which used to work very well for Apple, but now the trade in price has fallen a lot in terms of percentage compared to 4 - 5 years ago. And it was part of what drove the Chinese adoption. The Chinese is special in that they have a culture of chasing luxury brands, much more so on a per capita / income basis then any other country on earth. That is why all luxury brand are going in to make money. From my limited knowledge it doesn't seems the Indian has similar crave for luxury brands. They have a more price / performance culture. In other to change that, they will need some bloggers, media or other type of communication to tell them "why" it is better. The design, the hardware, the software. A lot of these "education" will need to take place now, and once their GDP or personal income rises, there will be an ever increasing amount of customer able to afford and iPhone.

NoB4Mouth 8y ago

Read [The Apple Revolution] by Luke Dormehl & you'll know who Apple is interested in. The Author alleged in the book that one day Steve Jobs ordered a survey from a company about its products and brand.The contractors got among others some samples of people living in the low-income US suburbs' communities and interviewed them. It's reported that when Steve got told in about it, he refused to pay the R&D company. "I ain't pay them...Who asked them to go there?" He reportedly told one of Apple staff? I'm sure the current Apple's leadership is still sticking to that line... Apple is waiting for India, Africa, Latin America... to emerge and have a stable class of insanely rich people. Chinese government backed companies know it. That's why they are flooding those markets with their cheap "spying phones".

readhn 8y ago

> Why the iPhone can’t compete in India Simple: iPhone X 256GB cost in usa $1150 The median household income in the United States is $56,516, according to 2015 data from the U.S. Census. Thus saving $200/month average family can buy iPhone X in 6months (which is still a lot of money for many and honestly lower budget consumers are not exactly Apple's target audience). iPhone X 256GB cost in india $1600 The median household income in India is <$3000 (estimated). In india a family has to work for 10 months saving 100% of income to buy iPhone X.... Dont need Harvard degree to figure out why it doesnt sell there...