Will the iPhone XR Prices Drop in India? | TechTree.com

Will the iPhone XR Prices Drop in India?

The answer is no, despite the fact that Apple has started manufacturing the gadget at the Foxconn facility near Chennai

 

Smarter users of smartphones usually wait for a new launch to pick up the previous one at prices that are considerably lower than that of the latest one to hit the market. And this is true with most iPhone users who would tell you that it is best to wait for the latest launch and then go for the immediate past version of the gadget.

With the iPhone 11 hitting the stands late last month, it was thought that prices of the iPhone XR and the iPhone XS models will drop and they did to some extent. Now, with reports of Apple shifting their manufacturing to India, the immediate question that was on our lips was, “Should we wait a few months to reap the benefits of local manufacture?”

Well! Sadly no. A story published in ET Telecom suggests that while production of the XR model has started in right earnest, it would soon be followed by the iPhone 11 series as well though there is nothing in the article about shifting the manufacture of other members of the series, viz., the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max to the country.

What’s going to be a dampener, at least for the near future, is the fact that these shifts in production facilities from China to Chennai hasn’t been made to meet the local demand alone. The entire output would be targeting sales across many of Apple’s markets, chiefly in Europe, the report suggests.

In fact, the move to shift the manufacture of the iPhone XR and iPhone XS to India had been brewing for quite some time. There were reports in July-August that Apple was preparing to do so but then came news that the company hadn’t procured the requisite sign-offs from back home to make the shift, which now coincides with the US-China trade battles over tariff.

The news of Apple moving its later models to India would provide a short-in-the-arm for the Modi government’s ‘Make in India’ campaign that has largely been low key in spite of the efforts that the regime had taken since 2015 as part of the project to convert India into a manufacturing hub from its current status as a services hub.

Already many of Apple’s global suppliers have set up shop in India, including the likes of CCL Design, Shenzhen Yuto Packaging Technology and Salcomp Plc that are manufacturing parts such as chargers and batteries locally to make use of India’s new policy initiatives of reducing tariff on products that have locally-sourced components. The company could save around 20% of its production costs on the iPhone XR by moving manufacturing to India, says a report published in Apple Insider.

Since Apple plans to ship the products out of India to several destinations, the possibility of reduced pricing is remote, at least for the moment. However, there have been reports that the company has already selected a location for the first-ever Apple Store in India following the government’s decision to relax foreign direct investment norms in single-brand retail announced earlier in August.

It may be recalled that Apple had launched a marketing campaign in India focused on the iPhone 6S with a clear “Made in India” marking that highlighted the device’s low cost. The company had started manufacturing the phone last year in June though it had started making the iPhone SE locally at the manufacturing facility of its partner Winstron in Bangalore.


TAGS: Apple, iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone XS, Foxconn, Winstron

 
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