3 Apple iPhones Cost more than a Car in India - Apple Realizes, Shifts to China, but.

Suppose you are a family of three. What will you take home? 3 Apple iphones for you, your wife and your child or a car for your family (because now, Tata Nano is priced at $2,000 where as each Apple iPhone costs $700)? Like any other educated and rational country, Indians decided for the second. With all due respect to Apple iPhone that sizzled in the US and European market, Apple failed to bring in the glory to one of the most aggressive mobile phone market in the world, India. So, with a new strategy they are now trying to reach out to another Asian giant, China.

With Vodafone and Airtel’s reports combined (two of the most popular mobile nework service providers in India) and estimated by a senior executive of Airtel, Apple iPhone hasn’t been sold more than 35,000 in a mobile phone population of 700 million! That was a disheartening figure by all means.

One of the main reasons have been pricing as we have already talked about this issue and other sides of the topic. Proving us right, businessweek quotes the reasons,

Apple’s India problems go beyond the issues of competition and pricing. According to Sanjay Gupta, the chief marketing officer of Airtel’s mobile business, Indians just use their phones differently. With spotty data coverage and slow download speeds on non-3G networks, the iPhone just doesn’t dazzle the way it does in the U.S. Also, Indian customers like to forward text messages; Nearly 70% of them do that at least once a day, says Gupta. Until recently, the iPhone didn’t allow users to do that. “It’s a big functionality issue,” says Gupta. “The device is being judged as a phone, not as a data device.”

From Chandni Chowk (India) to China

Apple is supposed to learn from the mistakes and move on to China. And so they reportedly have talked with CHL and CHU, two of the most popular cellular service providers in China. But CHU didn’t sound so sure about the deal. Yi Difei, a China Unicom spokesman in Beijing, confirms the two companies are talking but won’t commit to the rumored May 17 launch.

The cooperation with Apple is still under negotiation. It might succeed or fail. Both parties are still negotiating. The result is uncertain yet.

But there are three points which Apple must consider before making another strategic mistake of applying a universal rule that doesn’t attract the countries of this side.

1. Like India, Nokia rules in China too. and more importantly, people are happy giving Nokia a monopolistic market.
2. China Govt. doesn’t allow phones to have Wi-Fi functionality, worsening the user experience for many of the key, data-heavy functions on which the iPhone has boasted of.
3. Here people aren’t used to yearly contractual services for mobile phone networks. If Apple is likely to stick to what they did in India, then they have reasons to fail because it is asking you to change your system which has run for decades and that is a pretty dangerous things.