Like Vodafone, AirTel has also started offering the pricey iPhone 3G on EMI in India. EMI is one of the options that these players have adopted to increase the sales of the 3G iPhone in India. The high price tag attached to the iPhone is holding buyers from spending so much money on it. Vodafone has come up with financing options for credit card holders of Barclays and Standard Chartered bank and AirTel has come up with financing options for VISA card holders of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI Cards and Citibank. According to Hindu Business Line, “Consumers with ICICI Bank credit card can purchase the 8Gb iPhone by paying Rs 2,583 a month in 12 installments. In this case, customers will end up paying Rs 30,996 at the end of one year. SBI card holders can buy the phone for Rs 1,654 a month in 24 installments. The 16 GB iPhone, priced at Rs 36,100, can be bought for an EMI of Rs 3,008 for 12 months. There is no upfront payment.”The iPhone launch was a major flop in India contrary to the hype and crowds it pulled in the US market. AirTel and Vodafone were able to sell not more than 1500 iPhones (Industry Estimate) in the first week of its launch, which is really pathetic. If only Apple would have priced the iPhone 3G in the range of 22,000 to 25,000, just imagine the kind of response it would have got from the Indian market.
Did you enjoy reading this post? Why not comment and continue with the thread, or Subscribe to Not Another Mobile Phone Blog Feed and get high on the latest news & views about mobile phones. Apple and the two service providers have gone wrong with the pricing of the iPhone 3G in India and looking for different alternatives to increase the sales is the only option left with them. Also, the iPhone 3G is now available exclusively through the retail outlets of AirTel and Vodafone, which have limited number of presence, so these service providers will be making the iPhone 3G available through mobile phone reatil chains like, Mobile Store, MobileNXT. These two are confirmed and they would be selling the iPhone by the end of this month or early October 2008.
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11:30 AM
Hey, the cost will go up by 10% if the consumers use the EMI options. Almost all the banks are charging a processing fees of that much.
11:33 AM
@Diablo - Yeah you are right, people buying an iPhone on EMI will end up paying 10% more. But apart from EMI, I don't think these service provider have any other option that would entice consumers. Hope after the EMI option opened up, there is some surge in the sales of iPhones through legitimate channels.
6:30 PM
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