5 ms·

Indians cry out for Apple's attention

53 points by bakbak 16y ago

bakbak 16y ago
"Indians are not maximalists, but they are not minimalists either." "Indians like the idea of more in less." India is a very different market and I guess Apple will take time to understand it but I hope its not too late ... Indian market is for both (classes & masses) and they both love and want Apple products... i was happy when i heard Tim Cook saying that Apple can't make products only for rich - this came when i guess cheaper iphone rumor was in media, and if Apple wants to remain world leader even 50yrs from now then they have to turn this rumor in to reality asap by pushing their innovation button even harder than ever before... India is a HUGE HUGE market and to understand that you require your active presence there ...Indians like the idea of more in less and that is the biggest challenge for any non-indian companies, because they just dont get it (in the beginning) ... for the first few years they struggle until they understand social-cultural-economical way of thinking of this unique society...
- start123 16y ago
  Apple iPhone costs about $900 in India which is ridiculosly high than its American price.
  - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
    Well, the iPhone is 600-700 euro in Europe, too, but carrier plans are also cheaper than those in the states, as I would guess are in India. Things indeed look very unfair if you don't factor in subsidies and factor out taxes and duties.
    - start123 16y ago
      900$ is when you have a carrier plan. There are two carriers in India which sell the iPhone at that rate. Again, anything around 600$ would have done wonders to Apple in India. I myself would have bought it!
      - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
        The 16 GB iPhone 4 is €659 with €15 per month for 12 months plan on Vodafone in Greece. I understand that the size of the respective markets is vastly different and that strategically sacrificing margins for market share is more justified for the Indian market, but my point is that higher prices than the US is not unique to India situation.
  - cazlab 16y ago
    The American market iphone price is distorted by contract entrapment scams that service carriers use. Basically they give you an underpriced phone if you sign a 2 year contract and then pack the cost of the phone into the contract through extra fees and costs.
- bakbak 16y ago
  Please show enough courtesy for down-voting me, not that i take it personally but would like to know why you differ from my opinion which comes after 20yrs of sales and marketing experience to that market ...
  - mbateman 16y ago
    I didn't downvote you but I couldn't make sense of your comment. Especially the last two sentences. The idea that India is "unique" and that corporations fail because they don't get the "more in less" culture seems very vague.
    - bakbak 16y ago
      thanks for your explanation ... this is the exactly what I meant to say that when multinationals are given presentations by indian advertising agencies they say the same thing that you said above that "we can't make sense of your presentation". Let me give you couple of examples - 15 to 20yrs a go there was this indian TV maker company that was giving toughest fight to multinationals like Sony, Samsung, LG etc. - these multinationals just couldn't get it how their product which is such a huge hit worldwide is not selling in india, the reason was that the indian TV was having more meaningful features than any other tv in the market ... also when Coca Cola and Pepsi came to india, they failed horribly in the beginning, in fact coca-cola realized very soon and bought highly successful indian brand "THUMPS-UP" but the biggest benefit they got is they also brought-in those indian executives to re-shape the strategy for Coke ... this is true for almost all the foreign companies , in fact Nokia is a huge hit in India, the reason being they innovate and market product specially made for indian consumers , one of the phone has a flashlight which is a huge hit in small towns where it gets dark early in the afternoon and there is no electricity on the road ... this kind of innovation is needed when you develop product for specific market/society - you just cant guess that what is successful in western countries will be successful by default in developing or third world countries where the consumer are very price conscious but won't sacrifice on quality and features ...
      - mbateman 16y ago
jrubyer 16y ago
Why is Hacker News becoming more and more Apple News? //I don't care about the downvotes, this needs to be said.
- jonursenbach 16y ago
  I'd guess because they're a tech company that affects a very large majority of us?
  - cazlab 16y ago
    "very large majority" hrmph let's see 10% market share in the PC market and 20% in the phone market? (These numbers were culled from a few quick googles) Way to be self centric, dude. "The majority of my computer crap is apple, thusly a very large majority uses apple products"
  - jrubyer 16y ago
    sigh Nope, I thought HN was for news related to startups and things that are interesting to hackers. If more and more of news submissions here become related to Apple, then doesn't this make it Apple News?
    - jonursenbach 16y ago
      Apple news affects iOS startups, which there are plenty here.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  How long have you been on Hacker News? Your account is only 20 days old; can you pass adequate judgment on the matter? Simple answer: Apple is popular in Hacker News lately because they've done a lot of interesting (~ discussion-worthy) things lately, such as: change the App Store guidelines to demand 30% of subscriptions revenue, released a Mac OS X Lion developer preview, the iPad 2, renewed their Mac Book Pro lineup, Thunderbolt, controversy between Amazon and Apple regarding the name App Store...
ved 16y ago
One more reason not to use Apple products in India...
unwantedLetters 16y ago
The Reliance iStore (which is a "premium reseller" of Apple products and what most Indians think is an Apple store) was selling me a non-unibody Mac in mid-2010 in Chennai (a fairly large city of approximately 4.6 million people). I didn't bother to check what rev it actually was, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth about Apple. The iStore website: http://www.istoreindia.com/index.html http://www.istoreindia.com/index.html (edit: I must add that they don't have the machine online, I was just linking to the iStore website)
- statictype 16y ago
  Odd. I bought a unibody MacBook around May/June 2010 in one of the Reliance iStores in Chennai. Don't recall seeing any older models there. Though they don't sell any of the latest iOS devices I was under the impression that the latest desktops and notebooks come to India pretty quickly.
  - unwantedLetters 16y ago
    It was the 17 inch model(which to be fair was the last one that even Apple phased out). The store I went to was on RK Salai. I had gone to the store soon after the 2010 models were released. I thought it was mid-2010. But it seems the release date was April 13 2010. So I probably went within a week of that date.
alienreborn 16y ago
I have many friends and relatives who use apple products but none of them bought them in india but imported them via relatives and friends who live in US. Buying an apple product(except low end ipod models) in india is prohibitively costly and illogical since you will end up buying an older version. Even though India not as lucrative as western markets for high end tech gadgets, the market is ever increasing and Apple should seriously change their strategy in India. It would be great if they open iStores in Metros where there definitely is a vast market to tap in.
Jabbles 16y ago
An Apple spokesman who asked not to be named said that the company did not disclose sales figures for India or discuss future release dates for products. He also declined to comment on criticism of Apple's strategy in India. Useful... What's most intriguing is that there is almost certainly some good (financial) reason for this strategy. Perhaps it's to do with marketing as Apple tries to make their products a sign of "rich and have friends globally" before opening up sales. I wonder how many new iPads Apple made for sale in India, or whether they are continuing to use existing stock.
- desigooner 16y ago
  if you took a casual survey of people owning apple products in India, in all probability you'd find that a bulk of those people would say that they procured the product via USA, UK, Singapore, Dubai or Australia and the likes vs. officially buying it from an Apple partner in India.
brudgers 16y ago
Although India is seeing economic growth, attaining US levels for income is a long way off. The top 5% of Indians by income have approximately the same level of purchasing power as the the lowest 5% of US residents on average according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in The Haves and the Have-Nots, a Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. [http://www.amazon.com/Haves-Have-Nots-Idiosyncratic-History-Inequality/dp/0465019749 http://www.amazon.com/Haves-Have-Nots-Idiosyncratic-History-...] That's not to say that there are not a large number of Indian individuals with substantial purchasing power (5% of Indians is 50 million people compared with 15 million in the US so there is a lot of disparity within the Indian group). Nevertheless, nearly everyone in the United States has more purchasing power than most of the top portion by income of the Indian population. For Apple, it is a simple matter of economics - they will sell more iPads elsewhere and by creating scarcity they can sell older models at a high price to offset the lower profits Apple accepts when selling new products in wealthier countries.
- ankimal 16y ago
  Nevertheless, nearly everyone in the United States has more purchasing power than most of the top portion by income of the Indian population. I beg to disagree. Top portion of indian income is a lot of people who can afford a lot of gizmos and $500 iPads are penny change for them. To come back to the point of smartphones in India, considering that 3G came less than a year ago, http://thinkingaloud.in/ArticleComments.aspx?ArtId=770 http://thinkingaloud.in/ArticleComments.aspx?ArtId=770 says that there are already 8-9 million smartphones before 3G came. So lets throw affordability for the richer as compared to the poorer in America out of the window, shall we?
atishbabu 16y ago
the article misses a big point on why Apple products are slow to come to India. the Indian government has imposed a 51% FDI (foreign ownership) cap on single-brand retail stores, hence the most apple could own if they started apple stores in India is 51%. India sells very little electronics online as of yet so most of Apple sales happen online. so if you are Apple and you arbitrarily have to give up 49% for no reason wouldn't you wait for regulations to change instead of helping prop up some arbitrary partner that you are forced to do business with? moreover, if you have to prioritize markets, wouldn't you prioritize markets where you own all of the business that you created before giving inventory that is in short-supply to a market where you are forced to sell through 3rd parties? also, this does not even start to address the duties and other fees imposed on apple for selling in India which jacks up prices for their products and reduces their addressable market. again, if you have to prioritize wouldn't you choose markets that were more friendly assuming limited supplies of your product were available. wouldn't you only come in when supplies were high enough or products were saturated enough in other markets that were more favorable to you? the article also confuses the population for India with Apple's available market in India, because of income levels in India a very small portion of the population has the income and desire to buy Apple products (Remember, India is the market of the TATA Nano, the 1 lakh car or about $2000 to $2500 USD based on the USD-INR exchange rate). Indians tend to very cost sensitive. Yes, India has over a billion people, but I bet Apple's market in India is 0.1% of the population or 1 million people max (and even then I think that 0.11% is high and overly generous). Compare that to Dubai or Singapore or Belgium where the population is much smaller but Apple's addressable market is higher due to incomes and purchasing behaviors. I am Indian and live in Mumbai and would prefer new Apple products to be available in India sooner rather than later (I have a iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and MacBook Pro), but I understand why Apple has made certain business decisions in how they prioritize their markets.
- kingsley_20 16y ago
  The FDI cap easy workarounds involving setting up a wholesale business and signing up your customers as members (the CostCo model). Many other brands already do this. But otherwise, all valid points.
Isamu 16y ago
I am confident that India is on Apple's radar screen, and they are certainly interested in broadening their international markets. The fact that they don't discuss their strategy is well known and not surprising in this case. I also don't think anybody should be surprised that the business issues are different and complex compared to the US. This is probably further complicated by the fact that Apple wants to do things on its own terms most of the time. As an aside for those who get tired of the news about Apple on HN, I find it a very good source of study for anybody interested in business. In particular you see Apple going against the conventional wisdom sometimes and they come up a winner. They have managed to put together a very robust team and are still in a period of explosive revenue growth. What's not to talk about?
fpgeek 16y ago
I really think they should have should have said something about Notion Ink. While there have been bumps in the road, Indians aren't just waiting for Apple or Samsung to smile on them. Some Indians are making tablets of their own.

53 points by bakbak 16y ago

"Indians are not maximalists, but they are not minimalists either." "Indians like the idea of more in less." India is a very different market and I guess Apple will take time to understand it but I hope its not too late ... Indian market is for both (classes & masses) and they both love and want Apple products... i was happy when i heard Tim Cook saying that Apple can't make products only for rich - this came when i guess cheaper iphone rumor was in media, and if Apple wants to remain world leader even 50yrs from now then they have to turn this rumor in to reality asap by pushing their innovation button even harder than ever before... India is a HUGE HUGE market and to understand that you require your active presence there ...Indians like the idea of more in less and that is the biggest challenge for any non-indian companies, because they just dont get it (in the beginning) ... for the first few years they struggle until they understand social-cultural-economical way of thinking of this unique society...

start123 16y ago
Apple iPhone costs about $900 in India which is ridiculosly high than its American price.
- lurch_mojoff 16y ago
  Well, the iPhone is 600-700 euro in Europe, too, but carrier plans are also cheaper than those in the states, as I would guess are in India. Things indeed look very unfair if you don't factor in subsidies and factor out taxes and duties.
  - start123 16y ago
    900$ is when you have a carrier plan. There are two carriers in India which sell the iPhone at that rate. Again, anything around 600$ would have done wonders to Apple in India. I myself would have bought it!
    - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
      The 16 GB iPhone 4 is €659 with €15 per month for 12 months plan on Vodafone in Greece. I understand that the size of the respective markets is vastly different and that strategically sacrificing margins for market share is more justified for the Indian market, but my point is that higher prices than the US is not unique to India situation.
- cazlab 16y ago
  The American market iphone price is distorted by contract entrapment scams that service carriers use. Basically they give you an underpriced phone if you sign a 2 year contract and then pack the cost of the phone into the contract through extra fees and costs.
bakbak 16y ago
Please show enough courtesy for down-voting me, not that i take it personally but would like to know why you differ from my opinion which comes after 20yrs of sales and marketing experience to that market ...
- mbateman 16y ago
  I didn't downvote you but I couldn't make sense of your comment. Especially the last two sentences. The idea that India is "unique" and that corporations fail because they don't get the "more in less" culture seems very vague.
  - bakbak 16y ago
    thanks for your explanation ... this is the exactly what I meant to say that when multinationals are given presentations by indian advertising agencies they say the same thing that you said above that "we can't make sense of your presentation". Let me give you couple of examples - 15 to 20yrs a go there was this indian TV maker company that was giving toughest fight to multinationals like Sony, Samsung, LG etc. - these multinationals just couldn't get it how their product which is such a huge hit worldwide is not selling in india, the reason was that the indian TV was having more meaningful features than any other tv in the market ... also when Coca Cola and Pepsi came to india, they failed horribly in the beginning, in fact coca-cola realized very soon and bought highly successful indian brand "THUMPS-UP" but the biggest benefit they got is they also brought-in those indian executives to re-shape the strategy for Coke ... this is true for almost all the foreign companies , in fact Nokia is a huge hit in India, the reason being they innovate and market product specially made for indian consumers , one of the phone has a flashlight which is a huge hit in small towns where it gets dark early in the afternoon and there is no electricity on the road ... this kind of innovation is needed when you develop product for specific market/society - you just cant guess that what is successful in western countries will be successful by default in developing or third world countries where the consumer are very price conscious but won't sacrifice on quality and features ...
    - mbateman 16y ago

jrubyer 16y ago

Why is Hacker News becoming more and more Apple News? //I don't care about the downvotes, this needs to be said.

jonursenbach 16y ago
I'd guess because they're a tech company that affects a very large majority of us?
- cazlab 16y ago
  "very large majority" hrmph let's see 10% market share in the PC market and 20% in the phone market? (These numbers were culled from a few quick googles) Way to be self centric, dude. "The majority of my computer crap is apple, thusly a very large majority uses apple products"
- jrubyer 16y ago
  sigh Nope, I thought HN was for news related to startups and things that are interesting to hackers. If more and more of news submissions here become related to Apple, then doesn't this make it Apple News?
  - jonursenbach 16y ago
    Apple news affects iOS startups, which there are plenty here.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
beaumartinez 16y ago
How long have you been on Hacker News? Your account is only 20 days old; can you pass adequate judgment on the matter? Simple answer: Apple is popular in Hacker News lately because they've done a lot of interesting (~ discussion-worthy) things lately, such as: change the App Store guidelines to demand 30% of subscriptions revenue, released a Mac OS X Lion developer preview, the iPad 2, renewed their Mac Book Pro lineup, Thunderbolt, controversy between Amazon and Apple regarding the name App Store...

ved 16y ago

One more reason not to use Apple products in India...

unwantedLetters 16y ago

The Reliance iStore (which is a "premium reseller" of Apple products and what most Indians think is an Apple store) was selling me a non-unibody Mac in mid-2010 in Chennai (a fairly large city of approximately 4.6 million people). I didn't bother to check what rev it actually was, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth about Apple. The iStore website: http://www.istoreindia.com/index.html http://www.istoreindia.com/index.html (edit: I must add that they don't have the machine online, I was just linking to the iStore website)

statictype 16y ago
Odd. I bought a unibody MacBook around May/June 2010 in one of the Reliance iStores in Chennai. Don't recall seeing any older models there. Though they don't sell any of the latest iOS devices I was under the impression that the latest desktops and notebooks come to India pretty quickly.
- unwantedLetters 16y ago
  It was the 17 inch model(which to be fair was the last one that even Apple phased out). The store I went to was on RK Salai. I had gone to the store soon after the 2010 models were released. I thought it was mid-2010. But it seems the release date was April 13 2010. So I probably went within a week of that date.

alienreborn 16y ago

I have many friends and relatives who use apple products but none of them bought them in india but imported them via relatives and friends who live in US. Buying an apple product(except low end ipod models) in india is prohibitively costly and illogical since you will end up buying an older version. Even though India not as lucrative as western markets for high end tech gadgets, the market is ever increasing and Apple should seriously change their strategy in India. It would be great if they open iStores in Metros where there definitely is a vast market to tap in.

Jabbles 16y ago

An Apple spokesman who asked not to be named said that the company did not disclose sales figures for India or discuss future release dates for products. He also declined to comment on criticism of Apple's strategy in India. Useful... What's most intriguing is that there is almost certainly some good (financial) reason for this strategy. Perhaps it's to do with marketing as Apple tries to make their products a sign of "rich and have friends globally" before opening up sales. I wonder how many new iPads Apple made for sale in India, or whether they are continuing to use existing stock.

desigooner 16y ago
if you took a casual survey of people owning apple products in India, in all probability you'd find that a bulk of those people would say that they procured the product via USA, UK, Singapore, Dubai or Australia and the likes vs. officially buying it from an Apple partner in India.

brudgers 16y ago

Although India is seeing economic growth, attaining US levels for income is a long way off. The top 5% of Indians by income have approximately the same level of purchasing power as the the lowest 5% of US residents on average according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic in The Haves and the Have-Nots, a Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. [http://www.amazon.com/Haves-Have-Nots-Idiosyncratic-History-Inequality/dp/0465019749 http://www.amazon.com/Haves-Have-Nots-Idiosyncratic-History-...] That's not to say that there are not a large number of Indian individuals with substantial purchasing power (5% of Indians is 50 million people compared with 15 million in the US so there is a lot of disparity within the Indian group). Nevertheless, nearly everyone in the United States has more purchasing power than most of the top portion by income of the Indian population. For Apple, it is a simple matter of economics - they will sell more iPads elsewhere and by creating scarcity they can sell older models at a high price to offset the lower profits Apple accepts when selling new products in wealthier countries.

ankimal 16y ago
Nevertheless, nearly everyone in the United States has more purchasing power than most of the top portion by income of the Indian population. I beg to disagree. Top portion of indian income is a lot of people who can afford a lot of gizmos and $500 iPads are penny change for them. To come back to the point of smartphones in India, considering that 3G came less than a year ago, http://thinkingaloud.in/ArticleComments.aspx?ArtId=770 http://thinkingaloud.in/ArticleComments.aspx?ArtId=770 says that there are already 8-9 million smartphones before 3G came. So lets throw affordability for the richer as compared to the poorer in America out of the window, shall we?

atishbabu 16y ago

the article misses a big point on why Apple products are slow to come to India. the Indian government has imposed a 51% FDI (foreign ownership) cap on single-brand retail stores, hence the most apple could own if they started apple stores in India is 51%. India sells very little electronics online as of yet so most of Apple sales happen online. so if you are Apple and you arbitrarily have to give up 49% for no reason wouldn't you wait for regulations to change instead of helping prop up some arbitrary partner that you are forced to do business with? moreover, if you have to prioritize markets, wouldn't you prioritize markets where you own all of the business that you created before giving inventory that is in short-supply to a market where you are forced to sell through 3rd parties? also, this does not even start to address the duties and other fees imposed on apple for selling in India which jacks up prices for their products and reduces their addressable market. again, if you have to prioritize wouldn't you choose markets that were more friendly assuming limited supplies of your product were available. wouldn't you only come in when supplies were high enough or products were saturated enough in other markets that were more favorable to you? the article also confuses the population for India with Apple's available market in India, because of income levels in India a very small portion of the population has the income and desire to buy Apple products (Remember, India is the market of the TATA Nano, the 1 lakh car or about $2000 to $2500 USD based on the USD-INR exchange rate). Indians tend to very cost sensitive. Yes, India has over a billion people, but I bet Apple's market in India is 0.1% of the population or 1 million people max (and even then I think that 0.11% is high and overly generous). Compare that to Dubai or Singapore or Belgium where the population is much smaller but Apple's addressable market is higher due to incomes and purchasing behaviors. I am Indian and live in Mumbai and would prefer new Apple products to be available in India sooner rather than later (I have a iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and MacBook Pro), but I understand why Apple has made certain business decisions in how they prioritize their markets.

kingsley_20 16y ago
The FDI cap easy workarounds involving setting up a wholesale business and signing up your customers as members (the CostCo model). Many other brands already do this. But otherwise, all valid points.

Isamu 16y ago

I am confident that India is on Apple's radar screen, and they are certainly interested in broadening their international markets. The fact that they don't discuss their strategy is well known and not surprising in this case. I also don't think anybody should be surprised that the business issues are different and complex compared to the US. This is probably further complicated by the fact that Apple wants to do things on its own terms most of the time. As an aside for those who get tired of the news about Apple on HN, I find it a very good source of study for anybody interested in business. In particular you see Apple going against the conventional wisdom sometimes and they come up a winner. They have managed to put together a very robust team and are still in a period of explosive revenue growth. What's not to talk about?

fpgeek 16y ago

I really think they should have should have said something about Notion Ink. While there have been bumps in the road, Indians aren't just waiting for Apple or Samsung to smile on them. Some Indians are making tablets of their own.