Why the iPhone can’t compete in India
theverge.com
theverge.com
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?
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.
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.
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.)
Then again, I believe the top-end Samsung and iPhones are comparable in price here in the US?
For example, one guy said he ditched iphone because he can't use truecaller on it. Another one just didn't like the UI. Yet another one is tired of its rather closed ecosystem.
1. Its difficult for the average phone user to be convinced to spend money on a device that would cost considerably less if purchased outside the country. For example, someone was telling me (I haven't personally validated) that its cheaper to take a flight to Bangkok, Thailand and pickup a Macbook Pro 15' 2018 and get it back than buy it in a local store. The same thing holds true for iPhones as well. A lot of people get phones from friends / family traveling to other countries as its cheaper to buy there.
2. Android phones provide a lot of options at a variety of price points. The choice is ultimately the reason most people go the Android route. In case of Apple, only the iPhone SE is priced in a reasonable way (as the article points).
3. You don't get the same experience buying a iPhone as other countries as Apple does not have flagship Apple stores. The sales happen through re-sellers. That could be a factor as well.
4. Broadly expanding to other Apple products, the clear lack of choice puts people off. For example, I really want to buy the Macbook 12' but with a upgraded 16 GB RAM. But that option is not available on the online store or with the reseller.
That's the key issue.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
Amongst the part of the population who can afford an iPhone?
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.
Implying that not buying into a more expensive platform with more expensive software is illegal is just wrong.
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.
And yet you immediately jump to conclusion that everyone is doing something illegal.
I do pay for services that have an iOS app but they are not just iOS apps. That includes Office365, Evernote, DirecTVNow, Hulu, Netflix (not really, its free with T-mobile), Apple Music, and so guess I could include various streaming apps that I can use via my DirecTV login.
I would have paid for Overcast to support Marco, but he started his own podcast display ad network and he monetizes that way. I usually pay to turn off ads on apps I use frequently but I find topic relevant podcast ads so relevant, I consider the ads to be a feature.
I’ve always said it was a fool’s errand trying to make money on $0.99 downloads. Either create a service that generates reoccurring revenue or develop apps for B2B deployments where a company is willing to pay a lot of money for custom deployments. That’s where I made money working for companies doing mobile development.
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.
- 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.
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.
A simple one is why is there even a permission to let an app read and write all contents on an SD card instead of only allowing apps to read files that a user specifically chooses from a file picker? Or worse case read and write from your photo library or music library.
Besides that, Apple can’t control the entire worlds cellular and WiFi coverage. Some parts of countries only have 3G, some buildings only have shity WiFi. However, Apple can control how their iPhone’s storage performs by not allowing you to use crappy SD cards and just having you opt for more internal storage.
On second thought, you can’t even read media files securely on Android....
https://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/...
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:
This applies to Harley Davidson motorcycles (which I would guess are pretty rare in India) just as much as it applies in iPhones.
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.
Why? Specifically why. Not a vague answer of "customization", but a specific use that cannot be achieved via other means.
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.
Basically I'd like to be able to play video games without putting friends on the back burner.
Annoying assertions by the author. Typical tech "journalism"
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-...
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
Latest estimate from Benedict Evans and Horace Dediu put iPhone users past 700M and growing. Or over 1 Billion active iOS devices including iPad.
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...
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.
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).
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.
I've used both. I think usability between OS's reached parity awhile ago. I like Android best because I have a wide range of devices to choose from as well as not being hemmed in by iTunes (I remember being blown away that I couldn't just copy mp3/flac files over and play them).
I know I'm going to get downvoted, but Apple seems more like a luxury/status brand these days. Anyone who values money because they don't have a lot of it will be choosing Android all day long. If they do have money, they'll buy Apple because they notice that's what their peers have. The rationalization comes after that.
For Android users as well. I hear more Android users defending their choices than Apple users. You talk about peers, but Apple has about 20% of the mobile OS market, the rest is Android. There are more Android devices. So if anything, you'll "notice" your peers have Androids.
And I dislike usability arguments. Often they're rooted in learned behavior. Pretty much: "This doesn't work like this other thing I've used all my life, therefore it's not as 'user-friendly'".
I found Android devices to be a little more frustrating at first because I was used to other paradigms. I get frustrated with Windows 10 because they've changed where a lot of things are from previous versions. It took me a while to get accustomed to Mac OS X's various paradigms.
I personally prefer the iPhone SE. It's got enough beef under the hood and comes in a form factor I'm physically comfortable with. I find most other high-end iPhones and Galaxy devices to be way too large. I don't need a 13 inch screen on my goddamn phone. Hell, if they could make a modern phone the size of the iPhone 4 (Android or iOS, I don't care), I'd be happy as fuck.
But I know exactly why I chose what I chose and I don't cast aspersions on those who choose differently because I don't need to defend my choice.
It's incredibly inconsistent behavior (see my first post). Is there a reason why I can set the notification sounds for 150 different applications to 150 different things, but I _can't_ set the notification/alarm/ringer volume to different levels?
It speaks of problems when the first thing I needed to do on the phone was Google how to find better alarm clock than it ships with.
Is there a reason why the wifi hotspot is hit or miss? I don't know. It's probably a power saving thing somewhere. I don't care, though. When I have it turned on and no device has connected for a while, it should still be visible in a spectrum scanner without toggling it on/off, right? I guess not.
I'm not even gonna get into Touch ID (which is less reliable than the fingerprint scanner on my Nexus 5x, 4 years ago).
The speed of the phone is fine. The form factor is great. I'd be happy if it either behaved this way or that way all the time, instead of having to guess.
I've mostly gotten used to it, but that doesn't mean I think it's a good experience. It means I've learned to work around it, in the same way that I learned to work around issues on Android. I don't want to talk about the ass-backwards behavior of the search/keyboard tray, and how desperately I miss a "back" button. Try hitting the "Search" in Spotify, then deciding that you actually want to go back. It's far too many taps versus 2 on Android, and it's not intuitive.
Subjective opinion: Android (on a "Google Experience" phone) feels more consistent (breadcrumb/menu button almost always available instead of guessing which edge to swipe from, for example). And that's fine. But it's not what iOS is touted to be.
This is a thing? Not being able to move media files around? Holy crap it's worse than I ever thought. How on earth can a phone maker think that's a good thing?
I laughed pretty hard at that one. In LA, the homeless have iPhones...it's definitely not a status symbol down here.
At this point in the product cycle, everyone I know with an Apple wishes they had an Android, and almost everyone with an Android wishes they had an Apple, because the grass is always greener on the other side. But everyone sticks with their respective OS because of lock-in.
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.
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.