By: Abhilash
When we talk of Apple not looking at realistic pricing or subsidised pricing offered thrugh the service providers, we perhaps do fail to look at the similar pricing of such other smartphones, Nokia N97, N95, Samsung Omnia, Blackberry Bold and Storm, Sony Xperia, HTC Diamond; all sold in a range of 25k to 42K at the time of launch. The apple strategy of being called a premium product maker may have to do with this as well. Some people may be turned off by the idea of buying a premium product itself.
Another thing that has gone against Apple pricing be somewhat nominal is the Dollar-Rupee conversions, at the time of its launch next year rupee was at a pretty low point as well and this year it seems to be worse, hence a couple of Ks added to the original price from last year.
For what it offers in its true form with all the supporting services enabled, very few handsets stand to give an iPhone a good fight, but in a market like India, where govt policies delay services like 3G and consumer mindset of getting things free(hence, a movie/music online store may not succeed), an iPhone turns out only to be a luxury. People are happy purchasing a non-3g/3g device with 3-5 Mp and touchscreen at price points of 15-20K. While these devices mostly come with lesser memory, an Ok UI, and scarce support for applications, they are willing to compromise because they do not see the point in paying extra for some thing that ain’t even working yet.
Source: Abhilash