Apple Restructures Sales Team in India Amid Sluggish Growth

When you price your premier iPhone X at 1.5x the US cost, don't expect miracle sales. Also no amount of shuffling or re-shuffling can ever get you sales as they are dragged down by insane high price.

Apple itself is a joke to Indians. No proper service for its iPhones, iPad , macs, etc. The pricing is high (iPhone 8 cost nearly $1000, entry level 15 inch macbookpro cost $3000) even though Samsung and other Androids do competitive pricing (<$1000 for high end). when my iPad Air 2 failed (couldn't charge) within 2 yrs of its lifetime, apple asked near 375$ to replace it without checking any fault. Till they take care of pricing and do proper service in India, people are not going to give a second glance at them

But we don’t need an iPhone SE type device in the product lineup.

Selling fewer than one million iPhone devices for a half of year in a country of over one billion prople? That needs courage.

Dear Blind Die-Hard Mac fan(s),

Please listen to the folks from India who are here... they have made a lot of valid points.
Let's be honest, once you get hooked onto an Operating System unless its terrible suckie one finds it hard to move to a different OS. Apple is late to the party - they were busy trying to suck-up to the Chinese and ignored India and now the boat has sailed. There are just too many problems that Apple has been ignoring for far too long, and they have been listed above. Let me try and summarize:
1. PRICING: Apple has too much mark-up in India and has done NOTHING to compensate for Import Duty - all other vendors have ensured that their products sell at almost the same price as leading markets. the premium on Apple products makes it higher than competing products from Samsung, OnePlus 6, Xiomi, Pixel 2, etc.
2. SUPPORT: Apple support is terrible. I know a few Die-Hard Apple fans in India and they buy their Apple stuff in the US and take it back, however servicing these products in India is a HUGE PAIN - terrible service and expensive... so they bring it to US to get it fixed. How many people can afford that?
3. COMPATIBILITY: Apple products like iTunes work poorly in Windows OS. This has been going since years, and Apple has done crap to fix this. Hence the comments that the Tech geeks dont use Mac products, and dont endorse them. And the people who do buy iOS products find it hard to make them work without constant issues with the rest of the OS products. People who do get Apple products get fed-up with it.
4. OS: There was a time when iOS was amazing compared to android, however that gap has significantly narrowed. Android products that aren't loaded with any bloatware work well. Android users find it less compelling to learn a new OS.
5. OS UNIVERSE: Application Universe is pretty much the same between the two OS - let me qualify that... the big apps that most people use are available on both. The security concern with Android is lower now as people get more aware. A lot fo the new apps in India are now released first on Android... this includes new banking apps, ticketing apps, etc. And India is ahead of US in adoption of many of the new online functionality... lookup TEZ, PayTM, and many more similar apps.
6 APPS: Apps from Apple aren't HOT or compelling. In fact SIRI is terrible everywhere... and just not in India - cant compare it to Google Assistant which is way way ahead, as is Amazon (with Alexa). Google Maps are better and have a lot more details about India - this is just with the amount of focus Google has put on India compared to Apple thats busy making the next big thing... slimmer iPhone (which frankly no Apple user cares about another thinner iPhone).

With all this going on - Apple is toast. They will NEVER catch up with Google in India. And honestly the way things are going at Apple I wont be surprised if they become irrelevant by 2025. They aren't the most preferred product in the biggest markets in the world... and their product development is going downhill - the best they will do for new models is add OLED screen as standard, dual SIM, and make phone thinner... ALL YAWN worthy and not compelling enough for people to move over from Android. And on the S/W front SIRI will continue to suck, so their AI, home automation products cant be any better (cause they haven't yet even figured-our speech recognition... evident with how terrible SIRI is - forget about context, and making contextual recommendation and help). And to add to all this - Google with all its products have made it increasingly convenient for Apple users to switch to Android.

With all this, is it a surprise that Apple has abysmal sales in India? Does it really matter? perhaps its indication of the future of Apple.

Maybe Apple thought people would buy it on monthly payment? Indians don't like to lease phones! Or for that matter anything. It's not the culture. They want to own it. Let's see how the restructuring would help.

Agree on the culture.
It is the outcome of either:
[LIST=1]
* Smart customers: Cash-and-carry is always the proper way to go. OR
* Not freely-available installment loans: either available at usury-rates or with high-credit hurdles.

Tim Cook apparently lacks understanding of developing-countries' economies when says:
"... Costs Less Than a Coffee a Day."

In what Galaxy?
iMessage to Cook: Not in most countries.

Do Indians "perceive value" that differently from other people in the world?

Excluding U.S. and Canada, the iPhone X sells for about US$1,200 in every other G20 country whether it's China, South Korea, or Mexico.

India has the lowest PPP GDP out of the G20 countries. Either Indians are extremely unique in their perception of value, or many are struggling to meet even basic necessities. In other words, affordability is a big problem.

Like I said, they don't see value in Apple's offerings when all their needs are met in other brands. Those who need more and those who like the Apple ecosystem, use it.

Smartphone use in India is 95% for internet browsing and social media. The remaining 5% is phone calls and candy crush and such games that will run just fine on any decent $100 phone. This is in contrast with developed nations where things like Siri, Maps, geofence and smartphone controlled lighting and home access, etc. are used.

For maps nothing beats Google Maps in India. No one uses virtual assistants here. A lot of what Apple offers in developed nations has no value here. We don't have Apple Pay. We don't have doctors and institutions who could use Medical ID.

Before just simply blaming on affordability, understand the demographic and the infrastructure. An iPhone is just another phone with a 'better build quality and some better things' here. A lifestyle product.

In developed nations, an iPhone literally offers features that make life easier.

Restructure your prices apple. Android have decent phones for lower prices.

Cause the majority is poor maybe.

There are a billion cellphones in use in India, of which approximately 350 million are smartphones. They have 300 million people whose primary gateway to the net is a mobile device .

It’s fair to say the problem isn’t them . It’s Apple and their inability to offer anywhere as much value as android does to that market .

Not terribly surprising since the people who can afford them in India can also afford to travel and pick one up on a trip abroad.