I hope you already read the comments of Apple CEO Tim Cook two days back about the Indian mobile market. He compared India with China and expressed that, India is 7-10 years behind than China concerning mobile infrastructure and other factors.
Nobody asked his opinions about India. However, he analyzed latest Apple’s downtrends in revenue. You can see the Apple’s growth rate from 2010 to till date. In 2011, Apple’s quarterly results crossed 80%, but from 2013 to 2015 first quarter the results are dramatically decreased. The main reason for this is, iPhone followed 4-inch small screen form factor even most of the world moved to larger screens.
Once iPhone 6 plus with large screen introduced in 2014 Q3, you can clearly observe the reflection of growth in the above graph.
Now coming to India, Apple performance is no way related to India’s poor network infrastructure. India has average network speed of 2 Mbps. In few cities in India like Hyderabad, we have super speed connectivity up to 250 Mbps.
Apple should learn from Facebook and Google
Tech companies need to follow strategies to expand their market. If they neglect this, starts to blame certain markets, and people in those markets, it does more harm. Time to time Facebook, Google tweak their apps and platforms to work effectively in low bandwidth markets like South Africa, India. Apple also needs to follow this.
Reasons behind Apple’s failure in India
There are many potentialities in India. That is why India is becoming the hub for Mobile phone manufacturing. The entire globe is watching latest developments in the Indian Mobile market. If Apple fails to grab market share in India, it is Apple’s mistake not India or Indian’s mistake. Here are the few reasons for Apple’s failure in India.
1. Overpricing: Apple tries to exploit their goodwill by fixing premium prices for iDevices. Few days back Apple released their latest model iPhone SE. There are no new attractive features in it.
Apple publicized iPhone SE as the budget phone. However, contrary, Apple sells it for Rs. 39,000 in India. How can anybody purchase such outdated form factor with no additional benefits for such huge price tag? Apple is following the same strategy from the beginning. It makes phones for the US market and try to market them in India and other countries.
On an average, 50% of the Indian citizens purchase new phones once in a year. That itself revealing the real potentiality of the Indian consumer market.
2. App non availability: Indians have a tendency to use any product to its full extent. Once they purchased the phone, they try to explore various apps to get things done. Because of these only tech authors like me, focus on innovative apps.
The Apple App Store has a strong approval policy for app developers. Getting approved in the App Store is not at all an easy task. Sometimes app developers withdraw their intention to publish Apps on Apple App Store.
In this context, there is a very limited set of Apps available for Indian needs in the App Store. Most of the apps available there mainly targeted to US citizens only. We cannot get popular Indian apps also at the App Store. So non-availability of local apps is also an indirect reason for Apple’s failure in India.