Most of the people in India feel
that Apple has got its pricing strategy wrong in India or Apple doesn’t want to
focus on India as a market for its high end products like iPad and iPhone. I feel that Apple is very smart to keep its
pricing high for Indian consumers. In my
opinion, iPad is not the right product for middle class Indian consumer and
Apple is aware of it.
Unlike west, most of the Indian
middle class households generally have one computing device – either laptop or
desktop and whole family uses it.
Personalization, as per the needs of different members in household, is
one of the standard features of desktop operating systems. Moreover, you have the option of logging out
of your personal accounts (email, facebook, etc.) from the web browser. However, Apple devices like iPad and iPhone
are more of personal devices rather than family usage devices. If one member of the family setups his/ her
email, facebook, youtube, linkedin accounts on iPad/ iPhone, the information
can be easily viewed by all other members of family without any
restrictions. I believe that Apple is very
much aware of this cultural different between the India and west. This is the reason of keeping prices of iPad/
iPhone high to target only upper middle class and upper class, who can afford iPad
as their personal device and keep it personal too J
To sum it up, I believe that
Apple is aware that they don’t have product in iPad for average Indian family and keeping
the pricing high is a way to target the audience who can afford to treat iPad/
iPhone as personal device.
Another reason could be the fact that Indian consumer is still immature about personal computing as a practice. So, their expectations from an iPad may be wrongly placed when compared with a PC and iPad could be labeled as a failed product. So while the consumer matures, Apple would continue to sell its product at a premium and then slash them down when the customer is ready.
ReplyDeleteI would differ slightly here. The so called same "Indian middle class" is an active user of iPad in west. Agreed its more of a personal device than a family icon, but the uses of it are mainly lead by apps being used and the Internet bandwidth. Probably both these options are less (apps on android are more owing to it free/less cost, compared to Apple) for Indian geography. Everything comes with a price and where Apple leads the way. dekstop/laptops etc still run either free software or pirated ones at homes and hence the overall TCO is quite less for those devices.
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