Former Apple CEO John Sculley is one of the principal investors behind a new smartphone brand set to launch in India.
The as-yet-unnamed brand is being funded by the investment and acquisition company, Inflexionpoint, for which Sculley serves as a founding partner.
The brand is set to be led by Ajay Sharma, who was previously head of HTC’s India operation. The company will launch a series of smartphones, which will debut in April this year.
Having relaunched the iPhone 4 to help grow market share in India, new reports are now suggesting that Apple is also slashing the price of its 2012 iPad mini in an effort to make inroads in India’s mid-range tablet market.
For some time now, a number of pundits have been calling on Apple to release a cheaper version of the iPhone to grow market share in developing countries.
To some extent Apple has apparently listened — since it is reportedly planning to sell the discontinued iPhone 4 in India for the reduced price of around RS 15,000 ($250) — making it among the cheapest unsubsidized iPhones in the world.
The Rumor: Angela Ahrendts is only three weeks into her reign at Apple but rumors claim she's already outlined a plan that will completely revamp the end-to-end Apple Store experience.
The Verdict: The shift from computers to wearables is the perfect time for the ex-Burberry CEO to shake things up at Apple's glass and aluminum shrines, I just hope she gets rid of the annoying musical chairs-style support at the Genius Bar while she's at it.
Indian-based Reliance Retail will shut down 16 of its 20 Apple premium reseller stores because they do not comply with the strict guidelines set out by Apple.
Apple dictates that its stores must conform to a standardized design featuring high ceilings, white LED lighting, wooden floors, specific display tables, and numerous other details.
Breaking with the tradition of Friday launches in India — and despite rumors that it would take place on November 29 — Apple has announced that customers in India will be able to buy the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display as of Saturday, December 7.
Cult of Mac may have previously reported that Apple manufacturer Foxconn was scaling back on iPhone 5c production — instead focusing its attention on the 5s — but it seems that there is at least one place where the iPhone 5c is finding its audience: and that place is India.
Although actual sales figures aren’t on offer — meaning that this relies on anecdotal evidence — resellers have reported far higher demand for the 5c than the new model Samsung smartphone.
All demand, but no supply!
24 hours after being launched in India, retailers sold out of the iPhone 5s — leading to retail chains asking for replenished stocks, following an unprecedented demand for the new smartphone.
The iPhone just became much more cost-friendly in the second largest wireless market in the world. India’s third largest carrier, Reliance Communications, has started selling the iPhone 5c and 5s with a two-year contract. Indian customers have previously only been able to purchase the iPhone for its full, unsubsidized price off contract.
India is a key emerging market for Apple, and this move could significantly bolster iPhone sales in the country if it catches on at other Indian carriers.
Google Play has finally surpassed the App Store in the number of downloads in a quarter for the first time ever according to a report from App Annie.
Thanks to strong performances in India and Brazil, Google Play topped the App Store with 10% more app downloads in Q2 2013. Despite Google Play netting more downloads, when it comes down to what matters most – cash, money, revenue – Apple is still generating 2.3x more dead presidents than Google Play.
While the U.S. market has been the biggest measure for success with handset makers over the last few years, all of that may soon change as the U.S. smartphone market quickly gets dwarfed by China and others.
According to a new report from ABI Research, China will displace the U.S. as the largest smartphone market by the end of 2013, but just five years later both India and Brazil will pass the U.S. too:
Apple resellers in China and India will try almost anything to get people to buy an iPhone but one premium reseller in India is taking it to an all-new level by offering customers a free upgrade to the iOS 7 beta with the purchase of an iPhone 5.
Don’t want to have to buy a new iPhone 5 just to play with iOS 7? The store says they’ll also let you pay to just upgrade to the iOS 7 beta for $20 if you have an iPhone 5 but it’ll cost you $23 for an iPad.
iOS 7 is in its second round of beta testing with developers and won’t be released until Fall 2013. The reseller’s Facebook posts advertising the promo have already been taken down, so we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple already put the kibosh on iCentre India’s new marketing strategies.
Source: iCentreIndia
Via: Techzei
Apple’s making a big push in India, and it appears to be paying off. According to an article in The Times of India, Apple India’s revenue already rose by a factor of three last year, and analysts there expect the current brisk sales of iPhones to boost the company’s bottom line to over $1 billion in the current year.
While Apple does not disclose financials for the Indian sales unit, it does file with the Indian Registrar of Companies. In that filing, Apple reported a 431 percent rise in net profit this year, which the Times attributes to iPhone sales.
For Apple to really compete with Samsung in terms of global smartphone marketshare, many analysts believe Apple will have to release a cheaper iPhone to appeal to customers in India and China.
As talk of a cheaper iPhone has ramped up over the last few months, Apple is also planning to increase its presence in India by tripling the number of exclusive authorized reseller stores in the country from 65 to 200 by 2015.
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is one of our favorite Apple analysts in the entire world. Mostly because his Apple predictions are usually horribly wrong.
After the disastrous Apple TV SDK Event rumor he created earlier in the month, Misek is back with a new note to Apple investors, and it’s not a happy one. According to Misek, Apple is about to face a very rough two-year period, and he might actually be right.
Multi-touch? Pah, that’s so last year. Gestures are where it’s at. Only yesterday, we reported on a prototype wrist-mounted motion detector; today, we’re trying out Flutter, a free OS X app that we first mentioned back in March when it was still a demo.
Now it’s available in the Mac App Store. It claims to put gesture controls at your, um, fingertips, using your Mac’s built-in webcam.
Does it live up to the hype? Well, sometimes.
The iPhone 5 is expected to launch in India on October 26, more than seven weeks after making its debut in the United States. The device is also expected to come with “wider availability” than previous models, which were hard to get hold of, and should come with a similar price to the iPhone 4S when that first launched in India.
Apple’s retail stores bring in customers like no other retail outlet on the planet, and so it’s no surprise the Cupertino company is keen to build more of them. One possible market for expansion could be India, where Apple is currently forced to sell its products through distributors. However, one Indian retail rule, which states foreign companies must source 30% of the value of their sales from local firms, could stand in its way.
Apple continues its rollout of the new iPad in nine additional countries today, making the sought-after tablet available in 57 markets worldwide. This is now the fourth phase of rollouts since the device made its debut on March 16, but one of Apple’s key territories is still without it.
Apple’s main supplier pal Foxconn is massive. With multiple mega-factories that can include up to 400,000 workers living on a cramped “campus,” it’s no surprise that Foxconn has quickly become one of the biggest companies in the world. They employ more people than Apple. Not only that, but they’re actually the 10th largest employer in the world, which is freaking enormous when you consider that the US Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer with 3.2 million employees. Foxconn, on the other hand, is just a few notches below them with 1.2million employees. Amazing!
Do you know anyone that owns an Android tablet? I sure as heck don’t, but they have to exist out there in the wild just like the rare and fabled Sumatran white rhinoceros, which native legend has supposedly living deep in the Indian rain forests. Which is rarer? But I digress. My point is that right now, Apple’s iPad is pretty much the only tablet you’ll see other people using because Apple is beating the pulp out of Android tablets with their massive sales numbers, and Apple maintains the momentum from the launch of the new iPad nothing will stop them.
Apple could be set to bring its popular retail stores to India following the Indian government’s decision to allow 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) claims Apple is already interested in opening stores in India, with the Cupertino company reportedly in the process of finalizing its business plan.
Since its release on the iPhone 4S last month, Siri has received some criticism for not coping well with a number of strong accents. But while the high price of the fifth-generation device may be seen as a major downfall to Indian users, they will be pleased to know that Siri will work just fine with their accent.
Even in India, carriers without Apple deals in place are going to desperate lengths to sell their inferior Android handsets as equivalent to the iPhone… even going so far as to advertise this weird iPhoneDroid rip-off, which boasts the design of the iPhone 4 and Android 2.3 Gingerbread as the operating system.
In most of the world, when you buy an iPhone, you pay a small initial fee upfront, but the rest of the handset’s price is baked into your two year contract, which you pay off in monthly installments. In India, though? It’s totally backwards… and totally bizarre.
During yesterday’s Verizon iPhone event, one journalist asked Apple COO Tim Cook whether or not Verizon had an “exclusive” on the CDMA iPhone.
Although the Verizon iPhone seems like a huge deal over in the States, in the grand scheme of things, one carrier’s not particularly important… but there are an additional hundreds of millions of CDMA-subscribers in other countries like China and India who Apple would also like to sell an iPhone.
Needless to say, then, Tim Cook said that Verizon’s deal was a multi-year contract, but not exclusive, meaning that the so-called Verizon iPhone is really the CDMA iPhone, and will creep out to other CDMA networks in the coming months.
Sure enough, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors on Thursday that Apple was likely to strike deals for the CDMA iPhone with China Telecom and Reliance in India in the next few months. Those are the two fastest growing mobile markets on Earth: CDMA subscribers in India account for 20% of the country’s 670 million subscribers as it is.
The CDMA iPhone may be a big deal for Verizon subscribers, and people who want more competition and choice in the American mobile landscape, but let’s not forget the international importance here, which is arguably much, much bigger.
