Indians cry out for Apple's attention
economictimes.indiatimes.com
economictimes.indiatimes.com
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.
second, I never suggested that India was a small computer market, just saying that the original article does not address some reasons beyond Apple's control nor does it look at things from Apple's perspective, Apple is not stupid if it was worthwhile for them to prioritize India higher the company would, just look at their efforts in China in terms of the iPhone and opening Apple retail stores, every business has limited time and resources and people and you are going to use those things in the markets that gives you the best return on your investment
But otherwise, all valid points.
they are setting up wholesale cash-and-carry businesses that resemble Costco in the United States
just envision that would be hard for apple to do in terms of apple stores for India
Hmmm, can it really be true that Singapore (population 5e6) has a larger market than India (pop 1e9), even given the huge per-capita GDP difference?
I agree with the thrust of your point (and everything about FDI), but would be useful to look at the income distribution in India to see if your ballpark estimate is correct.
my brief sample is walking around singapore you see many more people on a percentage basis with iphones in their hands and you go to coffee bean and tea leaf in singapore and you see that of those with computers out many more have MACs than their peer group in India at coffee shops with their laptops out - i am the first to say this is not the most rigorous argument
the amount of research that writers put into their articles is pathetically low, and editorial oversight takes a back seat to sensational headlines that grad attention and ad revenue
another way to look at Indian news media is that it actually makes Fox News in the US looks "fair and balanced"
if you think sensational seeking news media is a problem in the United States and elsewhere in the world, I don't even know how to describe how bad things have become here in India which is a shame because it used to be much better here in India
On the other hand, you could compare CNN here and Indian news channels for the kludges and for relying on "public opinion and insights" rather than partaking in investigative journalism.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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?
The iStore website: 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)
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.
//I don't care about the downvotes, this needs to be said.
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...
Apple gets coverage because they are simply interesting to write about. On the other hand, the recent page one love fest on HN for the last MBP announcement was grossly disproportionate to it's importance.
So, if a person's userid is 20 days old, then does it directly mean that the person has been using the site for only 20 days? what kind of logic is this?
Even so, I think the majority of frequent HN-readers (ie, those able of passing judgment on its trends) will have set-up an account, and I think the age of this account is a good indicator of how long you've spent reading it.
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?
"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...
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 ...
Apple's products are all pretty "generalist" -- you can make apps for them that do pretty much anything. So it seems like the iPad and iPhone should be a hit as is.
But I'm sure that Apple would rather give up the Indian market entirely than put a flashlight on an iPhone. The same goes for other sorts of feature considerations. I don't think Apple wants to compete in (or even believes in) markets where you compete by stacking up features.