
Why the iPhone can’t compete in India - atulg2
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17611438/iphone-in-india-obstacles-to-success
======
HenryTheHorse
Some anecdata based on my travels in the subcontinent in the past few years:

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?

~~~
azangru
> (and know that it is a "superior" brand)

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.)

~~~
mayankkaizen
Not making a generalization but I know many many guys who are rich and bought
iPhone but they just disliked and went back to android for one basic reason -
they love the android UI and ecosystem more.

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.

------
hashedout
The units that Apple moves in India is still significant but the population
being so large, the "market share" is very low due to pricey hardware. Apple
is not a lesser known brand in India, in Metro and even small cities, people
do use Apple products but the middle class and lower economy people can't
afford such an expensive phone. This is the reason why Xiaomi, Moto, Lenovo
have taken over big names such as Samsung in terms of market share. Most
people who buy iPhones in India do not care about the ecosystem that Apple
offers, it's just a status symbol to them. In fact most of the population
doesn't care about the ecosystem that a device offers, they just want a bang
for their buck.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the "market share" is very low_

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.

~~~
wlesieutre
Unit market share is useful for some things, revenue market share is useful
for others. If you wanted to talk about how solid iMessage is as a platform,
maybe for the relative value of selling sticker packs and other iMessage tie-
ins designed for the Indian market versus doing something cross platform or on
Android, you might be interested in knowing how many users there are in each
camp.

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.

------
ksec
It isn't about Apps ecosystem, languages barrier, Network, Apple Retail or
Services like iTunes and iMessages, or even a cultural relationship with a
Apple, all these as people have suggested.

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.

------
coldtea
Well, because, to quote Russel Peters "Indians are cheap" [1].

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).

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzgCDIUzq0)

------
JumpCrisscross
TL; DR iPhones are pricey. Not sure how to interpret this article. Apple has
never been about market share; it’s about profit share. I saw no case made
that India’s lower middle class is a better bet than China’s fast-growing or
India’s growing middle classes.

~~~
scarface74
Doesn’t there have to be a tipping point where you have enough market share to
make your platform viable enough for developers to even bother selling in a
certain area or to localize your app for that market?

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?

~~~
toast0
iPhone users are more attractive to developers than Android users because
they're more likely to spend money in the app store. (This is an unobvious way
that iPhones are even more expensive than the sticker price)

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.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Literacy in general is a challenge_

Amongst the part of the population who can afford an iPhone?

~~~
toast0
Less literate people may not be very likely to buy an iPhone, but a relative
may buy them one or give them an old one.

------
tough_luck
Here are my reasons to not own an iPhone as an Indian consumer

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.

~~~
bena
> I'm someone who always roots my phone asap.

Why? Specifically why. Not a vague answer of "customization", but a specific
use that cannot be achieved via other means.

~~~
mrguyorama
To inject virtual input using standard linux filesystem protocols and mirror
the screen to my Vive HMD so I can stay connected to friends and family during
time spent in VR, but that's impossible without rooting, and my phone is not
rootable, so screw me I guess

~~~
bena
Do you literally spend that much time in VR that you can't put it down to take
a call or send a message?

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.

~~~
mrguyorama
HTC built an app that supposedly mirrors some text messages or something? But
it doesn't seem to work for me. When I take the time to get into VR, I tend to
spend several hours playing various games and getting the most out of it. And
I would prefer if I didn't have to shut out the world just to play a video
game. Same reason I'm also looking into solutions to add some sort of discord
connection.

Basically I'd like to be able to play video games without putting friends on
the back burner.

------
post_break
Something I learned from this, iPhones from Dubai do not have Facetime. That's
pretty interesting in itself.

~~~
potlee
I hope you know that Dubai is not in India

~~~
post_break
I do know that. But people from India fly to Dubai to purchase iPhones because
they are cheaper than that. Apple even offers support for these phones but
they warn people that Dubai iPhones do not have facetime.

------
jordache
>The first is the bigger screen size, which is important when the smartphone
is the only Internet-connected device you own, which is often the case in
India. Second, is the fact that if you put your iPhone 6 in a case — which
almost everyone does with their precious smartphone — it can basically pass
off as an iPhone 8 at first glance..

Annoying assertions by the author. Typical tech "journalism"

------
scarface74
Why is the iPhone X over 4 times as expensive as the SE in India and only 3x
as expensive in the US? Is Apple even trying?

~~~
ceejayoz
It says the SE and 6S are available at $300 in India, whereas they're
$349/$449 here in the US. Sounds like Apple's willing to take less profit on
the low-end in exchange for market share, but is assuming anyone who can pay
$1000 for a phone isn't anywhere near as price-sensitive.

~~~
simonh
Import taxes in India are punitive, the article goes into this and it looks
like Apple is doing in-country assembly in India for some models because of
this.

------
logrott
I bought a $180 Xiaomi Redmi 5 and I was surprised that it opened apps faster
than the iPhone 8 Plus. Apple better be careful because low-mid range phones
are catching up.

------
jackhack
thus the rise of the $100 counterfeit iphone which is actually a rather clever
facade on top of an android:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counte...](https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/qvmkdd/counterfeit-
iphone-x-review-and-teardown)

------
NoB4Mouth
Read [The Apple Revolution] by Luke Dormehl & you'll know who Apple is
interested in. The Author alleged in the book that one day Steve Jobs ordered
a survey from a company about its products and brand.The contractors got among
others some samples of people living in the low-income US suburbs' communities
and interviewed them. It's reported that when Steve got told in about it, he
refused to pay the R&D company. "I ain't pay them...Who asked them to go
there?" He reportedly told one of Apple staff? I'm sure the current Apple's
leadership is still sticking to that line... Apple is waiting for India,
Africa, Latin America... to emerge and have a stable class of insanely rich
people. Chinese government backed companies know it. That's why they are
flooding those markets with their cheap "spying phones".

------
nabla9
It's estimated that Apple has 588 million users and there are 1 billion active
Apple devices. Average Apple user owns owns 1.7 devices.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-
estimates-588-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-
estimates-588-million-apple-users-2016-4?r=US&IR=T&IR=T)

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

~~~
ksec
That is an old, and likely inaccurate estimate at the time if I remember
correctly.

Latest estimate from Benedict Evans and Horace Dediu put iPhone users past
700M and growing. Or over 1 Billion active iOS devices including iPad.

------
readhn
> Why the iPhone can’t compete in India

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...

------
8675309t
Steve used to be happy to "be Mercedes", not all the market share, but a
household name and a synonym for high-end stuff.

------
known
97% people in India are poor by global standards
[http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-
india/](http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/)
[http://archive.li/voaLr](http://archive.li/voaLr)

~~~
wornohaulus
Ok. but poor people in India have poor Indian expenses I guess. and everything
that releases globally comes to India on the same day. speaking as one of
those poor Indians.

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.

------
type-2
anecdotal, but in my college in india every other kid has a iphone.

------
m23khan
lol, simple: iPhones can't compete in any poor / non-rich country. I am sure
there maybe exceptions but as a norm, they won't be able to.

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).

~~~
evol262
Counterpoint from someone who actually does own an iPhone after being on
Android for years (and I only have an iPhone now because I dropped my Pixel 2,
and Fi is taking a long time to send an replacement) -- no, it isn't
unparalleled.

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.

~~~
LarryDarrell
It seems like the superior usability argument is more or less grounded in a
perception of 5+ years ago. If you've stayed with Apple the whole time you
don't have any reason to re-evaluate so you just say the same thing over and
over. I remember the same thing among Mac users in the later 90s.

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.

~~~
bena
> 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.

~~~
evol262
For me, at least, it's not about learning new paradigms. I like different user
paradigms.

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.

------
calvinbhai
This article covers many aspects like Maps, Dual Sims, Price etc but leaves
out two glaring issues:

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.

------
ythn
This seems like common sense.

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.

~~~
acheron
Well, like all Google products, you’re paying with your privacy instead of
money. I guess privacy is only for people who aren’t “financially sensitive”
now.

~~~
ariwilson
Please explain how Chromebooks violate your privacy, thanks!

~~~
clay_the_ripper
Any product made by google has the goal of harvesting data. Whether you see
that as an invasion of your privacy is a matter of personal interpretation.

