Apple offers discounts of up to Rs. 34,000 for new iPhones

Apple is offering discounts of up to Rs. 34,000 on the iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus, through buyback schemes. Three senior trade partners of Apple in India have said that this is the first time Apple and its distributors are offering buyback exchange offers on old iPhones. They also said that this scheme will ensure all transactions are genuine, and reduce the burden of retailers, who can push sales further with these offers. The iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus were launched in India last month, with prices starting at Rs. 62,000.

Ingram Micro, one of Apple’s distributors, has rolled out a buyback scheme in a handful of Apple stores and retail chains in South India, which will soon be introduced in other parts of the country. Other distributors will soon follow suit, since the US company wants to achieve the sales target that it has set for itself, for the October-December quarter.

The buyback value of Rs. 34,000 on the new iPhone 6s is against iPhone 6. Apple has also said that it will buy back select high-end handsets of its rival company, Samsung. It has also created a separate website, where retailers will have to upload details of the old phones, against the new models which will be bought.

A senior executive with one of Apple’s trade partners told ET Telecom, “This is the first time a company and its distributors are closely monitoring the buyback at the retail end to track sales, showing how desperate Apple is to increase sales in India since it did not expect such a weak launch for the new iPhones.” He added that companies which offered buyback used to give indirect subsidy to retailers in order to compensate, and it was up to the the retailer to sell the old phone. However, this time, the entire process is being driven by Apple.

Earlier, it was reported that the new iPhones had sold lesser units in its first weekend as compared to its predecessors, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Pre-bookings for the new iPhones had also fallen short of the company’s expectations. Apple’s trade partners had said that the company had hoped to triple the number of pre-bookings for the new phones. However, bookings had only risen by about 10 to 15 per cent. Apple’s trade partners said that the reason for the slump is that buyers expect lower prices of the new phones in online stores, once the phoned become widely available. They also said that another reason could be the base version of the new iPhone costing about Rs. 9,000 more than last year’s iPhone, alongside providing only 16GB of storage.

Source: ET Telecom

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Shrey Pacheco

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