Apple’s iPhone 15 will be available in India on September 22, as in other countries but there will be no reduction in prices even though iPhones have now been assembled here, at Foxconn’s unit, for six years now.
Analysts and market trackers believe it could take time for Apple to actually pass on some benefit to the consumers in terms of pricing and that will happen once it starts manufacturing on a larger scale. The higher pricing even for iPhones assembled in India is despite the fact that Apple’scontract manufacturers like Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron are getting incentives under the government’s production-linked incentive scheme.
The latest base version of iPhone 15 is priced at Rs 79,900, similar to iPhone 14 variant when it was launched last year. In comparison, in the US, the iPhone 15 will sell at $799 (Rs 66,000). Similarly, there is a huge difference between the iPhone 15 Pro model which is available in India at around Rs 134,900 compared to $999 (Rs 82,889) in the US.
“It is understood that higher prices for iPhones are considering factors like depreciation of Indian rupee as well as various factors like taxes, input costs, etc, makes the price in India higher, but the company should have passed atleast some benefits to the consumers,” an executive at a smartphone company said on the condition of anonymity.
In FY23, iPhone exports from India rose over four times to Rs 40,000 crore. According to India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), Apple accounted for 80% of all smartphone shipments from India in May. According to Counterpoint and IDC, Apple is likely to ship around 8-9 million iPhones from India, compated to 6.7 million in 2022.
“If you look at India, it is the second largest smartphone market in the world. I am really pleased with our growth there, we still have a very, very modest and low share in the smartphone market. And so I think that it’s a huge opportunity for us. And we’re putting all of our energies in making that occur,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in August.
Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at Techarc, said “People often confuse Make in India with products being affordable. The programme is more to be looked from a point of view of value creation in the econonomy in terms of employment, etc.”
According to Kawoosa, for Apple too there is a maximum dependency on other countries for import of components, the company is yet to achieve a certain level of scale, and any price reduction can not happen in 2-3 years of starting the production in any country. Further, factors like currency depreciation and taxation will always affect the price parity with other countries, he added.
Another plank of apple’s strategy this time has been to lure consumers to buy an iPhone 15 instead of iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and other older iPhone versions. The prices of iPhone 14 Plus and iPhone 15 have been kept in a similar bracket; the price difference between an iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 is now Rs 10,000, as post the launch of iPhone 15, Apple reduced the iPhone 14 price.
“Apple will succeed in its strategy of luring people to go for iPhone 15 as the new version has more value proposition compared to previous version,” said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint. According to Pathak, this time Apple has clearly differentiated in terms of features compared to iPhone 14 unlike the similarities between iPhone 13 and iPhone 14.
Besides the enhanced camera system, with a 48 megapixel primary camera and a quad-pixel sensor, one of the key features in the iPhone 15 is the use of Dynamic Island technology. The technology replaces the notch found on the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus models. According to Apple, the use of this new technology will allow users a more intuitive way to interact with their iPhones.
iPhone 14 is powered by the Apple A15 Bionic chipset, whereas iPhone 15 has a high performance A16 Bionic chip.
Even as the company is looking to move its consumers away from the older versions, a survey by market analyst firm Techarc suggests that consumers prefer to buy an earlier model of iPhones which sees a price cut after the launch of the latest edition. “This time as well, 63% of the respondents want to buy an earlier version of iPhone – iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 after the launch of iPhone 15 in India. At the same time, the remaining 37% users will buy the latest iPhone 15 variants within 3 months of the launch,” Techarc said.
In April-June quarter, Apple posted record revenue from its India operations that grew in strong double digits. The growth in Apple’s revenue from India operations was owing to its iPhone sales in the country.