Apple iPhone’s India Sales Grows By 400%, Are EMI Schemes To Thank?
India has become Apple’s test bed for emerging markets, with the company rolling out a series of discounts and payment plans in order to entice purchases and improve its market standing in the 1.24 billion people market.
According to analyst Sunil Tirumalai, Apple’s equal monthly installment (EMI) and cash-back programs have jump-started sales in India, which used to be around 70,000 to 80,000 units per month before the aggressive pricing schemes, reports Economic Times.
These efforts are paying off as iPhone sales have risen 400 percent over the past four months.
Tirumalai says the benefit of the new initiatives is clear, “The 4-9 percent implicit discount coupled with the option of easy EMIs spread over 6-12 months became popular. Within a few months, our discussions with handset retailers indicated that iPhone sales went up 3-4x, forcing companies to respond.”
Based on those numbers, Apple only trails Samsung in terms of overall sales in the country. Samsung, however, offers a much larger range of devices in India, including entry-level smartphones and feature phones which attract less well-to-do buyers.
Apple’s recent success in India also followed a rebranding of the iPhone as an affordable product rather than a high-end luxury item.
Apple had introduced the cash back scheme for its iPhone 4. Under this scheme consumers had to bring in their old smartphone and could take home a brand new iPhone 4 at a minimum discount of Rs. 7,000. As per the conditions of the scheme, Rs. 5,000 was the cash back discount given and the additional Rs. 2,000 was the minimum resale value pegged for the old smartphone.
If the consumers tried to exchange a smartphone, whose resale value was more than Rs. 2,000 then the effective cash back to them was Rs. 5,000 plus the value the resale of the phone. Initially, the scheme was launched for just 15 days. However, given the popularity the scheme was extended till May.
Even now, Apple is running a scheme, where in students are eligible for Rs. 7,777 discount on purchase of Apple iPhone 4. Apart from this, the American Express card holders can get an additional 10 percent on purchasing this smartphone.
Apple also sells older models of the handset in India that pre-date the iPhone 4 and are not officially sold by the company in any other country.
[The Economic Times]
