Report: faced with a $955 starting price, Indian customers are not rushing to get the iPhone 6s
According to a new report, the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been met with a mild reception in India, a country where Apple launched its new iPhones this past weekend at extremely high prices.
The report says that Apple has sold about 50,000 units over the weekend. Last year when Apple launched the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the country, the initial stock of about 55,000 phones was depleted in the first 72 hours following the launch. This time around, Apple had muh more units available at launch, 165,000 of them, but it would appear that less a third of the initial stock has been sold thus far.
If you're wondering why the Apple iPhone 6s series isn't selling better than its predecessor in India, the answer is fairly simple: Apple's new iPhones are exorbitantly priced in the country. In fact, with prices starting at the equivalent of $925 for the entry-level iPhone 6s with 16GB of storage and maxing out at a whopping $1416 for the 128GB iPhone 6s Plus, India gets the highest iPhone prices out of all the countries where the new handsets are available for purchase. To help put things in balance, it should be noted that, according to estimates, the average salary in India is only $295.
The report claims that everyone - from retailers to customers - is getting ready for price reductions, which are expected to arrive as early as in a couple of weeks.
Even if this report turns out to be accurate, then a not-so-hot iPhone 6s launch weekend in India isn't likely to severely impact the company's profits. India may be the third largest smartphone market in the world, but it's also one where customers are largely interested in cost-effective smartphones, not premium products such as the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus. On another note, this isn't the first report to point out that Apple's new iPhones are selling worse than the company previously anticipated.
source: Business Standard via GSMArena
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