Apple Inc products may soon be given the status of the forbidden fruit.
Apple’s year started with the highly-debated encryption fight with the FBI. The company followed it up with the launch of two new products on 21 March, the iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.
Though the intention was good, it isn’t well received in India.
India is a price sensitive market. The reason for the success of Chinese smartphone players like Xiaomi, Gionee, Vivo and even the Korean Samsung in India has been the pricing of their products.
Apple’s market shares took a hit in 2015 after they launched the exorbitantly priced iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Initially, the 128GB version of the 6s Plus cost almost a lakh.
They thought there will be takers for it, but sadly it didn’t go as planned for Apple. And just a few months after the launch, the prices of the phones was slashed.
And now with the iPhone SE priced at Rs 39,000, they have overplayed their hand in this round.
The initial release by Apple suggested that the phone would be priced at Rs 30,000 which was still on a higher side considering that it’s priced at $399 (approx Rs 27,930) in the US.
Saying that it’s an affordable iPhone is not at all correct in the Indian context. It’s a price jump of almost Rs 11,000 by the time it reaches India, which is a lot, considering that you get a good Android phone for that price.
The device, as they say, is a ‘Special Edition’ iPhone. But, in reality, there’s nothing special about it.
To start with the 16GB storage version just does not make sense in 2016. And then there’s a 64GB version. What happened to the 32GB version? In 2016 , a 16GB model of any phone is useless unless it comes with expandable memory.
There is also no 3D Touch on the iPhone SE and has a better battery life and LTE speeds only in theory. The only good part about the new iPhone SE is its processor and the 12-megapixel iSight camera.
It does not make sense to buy one, just for that.
Many would argue that Rs 39,000 is good pricing for a quality product. But Samsung also makes quality products which are priced way lower than the iPhones.
Some may also say that there is a novelty in owning an iPhone. Yes, the iPhone 6s has novelty, but if you own an iPhone SE you know there’s no novelty in that.
The design hasn’t dramatically changed and in a crowd of beautiful looking smartphones, the iPhone SE can easily be passed off as an iPhone 5 or 5s.
A 4-inch iPhone is a good buy but not at that price. Also, adding a Rose Gold variant does not make a me-too product any better.
Apple has wasted time in making this phone and almost seemed to have ridiculed the Indian Apple fanboys by pricing it as high as Rs 39,000 for the16GB version.
The iPhone is 6 is now available for as low as Rs 31,000 and the iPhone 6s for Rs 41,000, on some e-commerce websites.
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