applemagic

muthuk_vanalingam said:

Folio said:

India economy growing about twice as fast as China now. Not too long will outstrip in population. 

I don't think so, on the economy part. Our current government has a penchant for redefining every metric to make sure the numbers look good, never mind the actual ground reality. Just to give an example, if the survey conduced by government finds that 69% of Indians are below poverty line based on $50 per month earning, they would redefine the poverty line to $25 and say ONLY 49% of people are earning below poverty line. And they would boast it as an significant achievement of government. I remember reading about Chinese government exaggerating their growth estimates (don't have any links to back up this point though), so we would never know the real picture I guess.

Hmm...just for the sake of factual clarity, you got your facts mixed up. In July 2014, less than two months after the current government had come to power, the former governor of RBI (India's central bank) submitted a report recommending revised figures for below poverty line which dramatically increased the number of this segment of people.

The abnormally low percentage of people below the poverty line was actually the handiwork of the previous government. More here: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-poverty-line-Rs-32-in-villages-Rs-47-in-cities/articleshow/37920441.cms

gmgravytrain said:

There's no way Apple can ever sell many iPhones in India. Apple doesn't sell $100 smartphones. A used iPhone 4s could be too expensive for most Indian consumers. That's just the way it is.

Believe it or not, Apple has great brand cachet with the middle class and upper middle class in India, not to mention the rich and the super rich. Here's an anecdotal encounter I had recently at a restaurant. An older person (easily 60+) sitting at the next table and dressed in the traditional white wraparound (called dhoti) and a white shirt was animatedly explaining something about a mobile phone to his colleague; it took me a while to realize that he had an iPhoneX in hand (with a clear case!). I was flabbergasted because it would have cost him nearly 100,000 INR for the phone and the case. He looked like a businessman, so money was obviously not an issue, but you must have seen the enthusiasm and conviction with which he spoke about the iPhoneX in glowing terms!

The stores of all the premium Apple resellers in my city are always full of people checking out the Apple stuff and buying things. When I got a 2017 MacBook Air recently, I saw someone walk in and, in literally minutes, walk out with the latest model of the Apple Watch.

I hope Apple gets its marketing strategy right to reach out to more customers. One thing that puzzles me is why Apple doesn't roll out its programme to buy the iPhone in monthly installments - this is how a vast majority of consumer white goods are purchased in India and I bet people would buy Apple products in the millions if such a programme were available directly from Apple.