Comment by bakbak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bakbak | Hacker News Reader

"Indians are not maximalists, but they are not minimalists either."

"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...

Apple iPhone costs about $900 in India which is ridiculosly high than its American price.

Well, the iPhone is 600-700 euro in Europe, too, but carrier plans are also cheaper than those in the states, as I would guess are in India. Things indeed look very unfair if you don't factor in subsidies and factor out taxes and duties.

900$ is when you have a carrier plan. There are two carriers in India which sell the iPhone at that rate. Again, anything around 600$ would have done wonders to Apple in India. I myself would have bought it!

The 16 GB iPhone 4 is €659 with €15 per month for 12 months plan on Vodafone in Greece. I understand that the size of the respective markets is vastly different and that strategically sacrificing margins for market share is more justified for the Indian market, but my point is that higher prices than the US is not unique to India situation.

Please show enough courtesy for down-voting me, not that i take it personally but would like to know why you differ from my opinion which comes after 20yrs of sales and marketing experience to that market ...

I didn't downvote you but I couldn't make sense of your comment. Especially the last two sentences. The idea that India is "unique" and that corporations fail because they don't get the "more in less" culture seems very vague.

thanks for your explanation ... this is the exactly what I meant to say that when multinationals are given presentations by indian advertising agencies they say the same thing that you said above that "we can't make sense of your presentation".

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 ...

Okay, I kind of get this, but I still don't understand the upshot for Apple.

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.

What sort of features did the Indian TV have?

one of the feature that i remember was that you can set individual settings for color, brightness, contrast and volume for each channel separately, this was a big issue as when you switch the channel suddenly color will change or volume will change due to default settings of the channel stations/broadcasters, the other was alarm settings and PIP etc.

Wouldn't have guessed those, thanks!

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