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The iPhone 7’s debut could be a litmus test for Apple‘s future in India, where a series of challenges has left the company looking like it’s in “no hurry” compared to the competition, analysts told CNBC.
But the new iPhone’s Oct. 7 launch in India could improve the company’s fortunes, as it comes just weeks ahead of the nation’s gift-giving season. It could mean reduced prices on older models, analysts said, and make more iPhones accessible in one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets.
It all comes at a crucial time for the company, as it looks for a stabilizing growth market amid a tenuous relationship with China, said Neil Shah, research director of devices and ecosystems at Counterpoint Research. In India, 16 per cent of the population had a smartphone at the end of 2015, compared to 44 per cent globally, according to Ericsson’s Mobility Report. With an estimated 2 per cent in smartphone market share in the country, Apple has been no match so far for the complicated regulatory environment in India, where everything from opening a retail store to refurbishing old phones favors entrenched players and adds enormous relative cost to Apple’s sticker prices. The Indian iPhone 7 is expected to be up to $250 (S$340) more expensive than in the US, nearing $900 (S$1200) – in a country where the average person made just $1,581.60 (S$2,152.30) last year, the World Bank estimates.
But to grow, Shah said Apple must strike in India before new smartphone users get too tethered to the Android ecosystem.
Despite its low starting point, India is already one of Apple’s fastest-growing markets – iPhone sales in India were up 51 per cent year on year In the first three quarters of this fiscal year, CEO Tim Cook said during an earnings conference call. And though there are challenges, Apple is a highly desired brand there, experts say.
That bodes well for Diwali, the peak of the festival season, when consumption and gift giving takes on a Christmas-like uptick. For instance, Amazon India saw its biggest day for mobile phone sales ever on the third day of the 2015 “Great Indian Festive Sale,” with more than 20 per cent of phones above the 20,000 rupee (about S$400) price range.
“When a new device comes out … you see an associated price cut for older models,” said Ishan Dutt, research analyst at Canalys. “That’s one source of growth for Apple. People who previously couldn’t afford the device are pulled in. There are still very wealth consumers there, and there are things that could sort of help it.” Meanwhile, the telecom industry in India is undergoing disruption. Wealthy mogul Mukesh Ambani has promised that Reliance Jio will offer the world’s cheapest internet data by far. Though that plan has its challenges, such a move could make smartphones within reach of much of India’s population. But while Apple co-founder Steve Jobs identified deeply with India’s “intuitive” culture, making inroads in the world’s second-most populous country has seemed anything but instinctual for the tech giant. Its iPhone SE, once thought to be a play at emerging markets, “failed to make any significant impact” in India in the second quarter, IDC estimates.
Steep local taxes are part of the problem, Dutt said. There’s also an import duty as long as Apple continues to assemble its phones outside of India, Shah said. Then there’s the lack of Apple retail stores in the nation, leaving vendors to pile markups on the already hefty iPhone price tag.
Plus there’s the resale market, which is healthy in some respects, Dutt said. But Shah adds that to avoid the buildup of electronic-waste, the nation has strict limits on importing refurbished products, potentially including iPhones. Different SIM card standards present more hurdles.
The company recently announced a developer centre in Bangalore, as Cook looks to shift the landscape in India. It’s an example, Shah said, of a show of good faith as the company seeks to gain favour among regulators. Though these changes might not come fast enough to meet the iPhone 7, they might set up a presence ahead of the iPhone 8, already expected by some analysts to be a hit. “We look forward to opening retail stores in India down the road,” Cook said in a recent earnings call. “We see huge potential for that vibrant country.”
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Zombies have got a new name.
They are called Hungries in this low-budget Brit thriller that seeks to reinvent the walking dead genre by injecting it with intelligence.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future where humans have…
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Trains started running more than an hour later than scheduled on Wednesday morning – with half the usual number of trains – after the line was hit by a power fault.
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When radioactive material enters the US illegally, two FBI agents suspect white supremacist groups are responsible.
They then go undercover to save America before it’s too late.
The man had locked himself and the boy inside the flat at Block 462 Sembawang Drive since around 6.40pm on Tuesday, according to the police.
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NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD- Tensions between India and Pakistan rose on Tuesday as India’s leader cancelled a visit to a regional summit and Islamabad warned it would treat it as “an act of war” if India revoked a water treaty.
India blames Pakistan for a deadly assault on an army base in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir this month that has heightened fears of a new conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
India says militants sneaked across the de facto border that separates the countries and killed 18 soldiers on Sept. 18, the biggest loss of life for Indian security forces in the region for 14 years.
Pakistan rejects the accusation and says India should conduct a proper investigation before it apportions blame.
India said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would not attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, a regional meeting of South Asian leaders, in Pakistan in November.
“Increasing cross-border terrorist attacks in the region and growing interference in the internal affairs of Member States by one country have created an environment that is not conducive to the successful holding of the 19th SAARC Summit,” India’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “In the prevailing circumstances, the Government of India is unable to participate in the proposed summit in Islamabad.”
Pakistan’s foreign ministry called India’s move”unfortunate” and said it remained committed to peace and regional cooperation. In a statement, it accused India of meddling in Pakistan’s internal matters.
WATER TROUBLES
India’s announcement came hours after Sartaj Aziz, foreign policy adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, warned India against drawing more water from three rivers that flow from India into Pakistan.
Aziz said Islamabad would seek arbitration with a commission that monitors the Indus Water Treaty if India increased its use of water from the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers.
India says it does not plan to abrogate the treaty but Modi said on Monday India should “maximise” the amount of water it uses without breaching the agreement.
If India revoked the treaty, Aziz said, Pakistan would treat that as “an act of war or a hostile act against Pakistan”. “It’s highly irresponsible on the part of India to even consider revocation of the Indus Water Treaty,” Aziz told the national assembly.
New Delhi has vowed to respond to the Kashmir attack, and has launched a campaign to isolate Pakistan diplomatically, including through the United Nations.
Aziz said India’s provocative posturing constituted a breach of the water treaty and was an attempt to deflect attention from unrest among the Muslim population in the Indian-ruled side of Kashmir.
Divided between India and Pakistan since 1947, the flashpoint of Kashmir lies at the heart of the countries’rivalry.
India on Tuesday summoned Pakistan’s High Commissioner in New Delhi and told him that security forces had in their custody two men from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir who had helped the gunmen cross the border before launching the army base raid.
Indian and Pakistani mistrust has long undermined South Asian cooperation and is widely blamed for the poor performance of SAARC, which successive Indian leaders hoped would help South Asia become a viable economic counterweight to China.
MANILA – A visit to China by a Philippine special envoy tasked with rebuilding tattered ties with Beijing has been cancelled, his aides said on Tuesday, the latest turn in a foreign policy increasingly unpredictable under the new president.
Fidel Ramos, who was president from 1992-1998, would still go to Beijing when the time was right, according to an aide. News of the aborted trip was posted on the website of the Philippines embassy in Beijing.
President Rodrigo Duterte picked 88-year-old statesman Ramos to start a dialogue with China in the wake of a landmark ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, which invalidated Beijing’s claim to most of the South China Sea and put much of the region on edge.
No official announcement had been made about the trip, and it was not immediately clear with whom he had planned to meet.
The aide said Ramos still planned to go to Beijing “at the proper time”.
China refuses to recognise the arbitration case. Both sides have pledged to pursue warmer ties, but it remains unclear how they plan to navigate the issues of the ruling, China’s man-made islands and its blocking of Filipino fishermen at the disputed Scarborough Shoal.
China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters the reason for cancelling the trip was because it clashed with Duterte’s schedule. He is due to visit Vietnam starting Wednesday evening. “The president’s visit to a number of Asian countries is being arranged,” the source added.
Duterte in a speech on Tuesday reiterated his hopes of making China a new friend, along with Russia, and said by next year he will have “entered into so many new alliances”.
His rhetorical outreach towards Russia and China was accompanied for a second day by a chiding of longtime treaty ally and former colonial power the United States, which he would not allow to “impose on us anything”.
A foreign policy for years aligned with the West looks set for a shakeup following Duterte’s near-daily, profanity-riddled rebukes of anyone from the United Nations, Britain and France to the European Union and United States. He has taken aim at those critical of his war on drugs, which has killed about 3,000 people in his three months in office.
A U.S. official said Washington is trying to work as closely as it can with Manila despite Duterte’s public comments. “He does say a lot of things in public, but we are still full speed ahead on cooperation with the Philippines,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten no indication from the Philippines that they are done with us, that they want to cut off counter terrorism cooperation, so there is this odd disconnect between what he says publicly and what we see privately,” he added.
China too was not spared criticism, with Duterte on Tuesday telling Beijing to control drug gangs supplying narcotics to the Philippines. “If you consider us your friend and want to help us, most of the materials are from China, what does that mean?” he said.
Lauro Baja, a retired former deputy foreign minister and Philippines ambassador to the United Nations, said Duterte should send a clearer message on his foreign policy intentions, and not through the media. “The view from the outside is that the Philippines’ worst enemy is itself, its foreign policy is confusing,” he said. “So, both Washington and Beijing would ask, what does the Philippines want?”
