TechTalk: How Apple messed up big time with the iPhone 15 Pro series’ pricing in India

After a lot of anticipation and a slew of rumours around its possible features and pricing, Apple has finally launched its much-awaited iPhone 15 series.

What was surprising was that as opposed to what people had expected, Apple did not increase the price of its devices this time around for its global users. However, as always, Indian customers are being treated differently.

Apple’s skewed Indian pricing
While the new iPhone 15 series, especially the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max come with a ton of new features and are actually pretty solid premium smartphones, it is hard to make sense of the device’s pricing in India.

There’s no other way of saying it but Apple’s pricing strategy for the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is bizarre, especially when you consider the price of the devices in India and compare that to the prices in the US and the rest of the world.

The pricing strategy seems even more bizarre when you consider that the prices of the non-Pro models, the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus are the same as last year’s iPhone 14 non-Pro series.

The iPhone 15 Pro starts at Rs 1,34,900 in India, while in the US, it starts at the same price as last year, $999 or Rs 82,850 (converted). In India, the launch price of the base variant of the iPhone 14 Pro was Rs 1,29,900, Rs 5000 less than this year’s model.

How bad is the disparity between international and Indian prices?
Even Price Parity ratios make little to no sense when it comes to the difference in pricing in India and the US.

Consider this conundrum. In India, if you buy the iPhone 15 Pro’s 128 GB variant, you pay Rs 1,34,900. That’s about $1625. In the US, not only can you buy the new iPhone 15 Pro’s 128GB variant, you can also buy their top-of-the-line Apple Watch Ultra 2, and still save enough money to splurge on a pretty decent dinner in a posh restaurant in the US, or some first-party Apple accessories.

Similarly, you will still come out ahead if you buy a return ticket to the UAE, especially Dubai, buy your iPhone 15 Pro there, and then fly back. And in case you want to go for the higher tier models 512GB or 1TB variants of the Pro or the Pro Max, you will end up saving more.

Does Apple have a defence?
Honestly, it doesn’t seem that Apple can really give a legitimate reason why the iPhone 15 Pro series’ price in India is what it is. Yes, we do have certain taxes and import duties that make tech products expensive in India. However, they are not this egregious.

The thing is this year, Apple is actually making a bulk of the iPhones it plans to sell to in India, in its Indian factories. And while Apple may not have started making the more premium, Pro lineup in India yet, the prices of these devices are unlikely to go down even when they do launch the India-made Pro devices here.

Apple is actually charging us more for iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, devices that it already makes in India than what they are charging people in the US and other international markets. In such a case, we have to ask, what good does it do for Indian consumers if, instead of lowering its prices in India, Apple still continues to charge an Apple Premium from us.

And even if we consider the technological advancements that are coming with the iPhone 15 Pro series, the US and the international market are getting the same device that we are getting. In fact, we are being short-changed here as well, as some of the emergency SOS features that were announced for the iPhone 14 series last year, still haven’t made their way to India.

None of this matters
In an ideal world, we could have voted with our wallets. However, we all know how that works out in the real world. Unfortunately, none of that really matters.

Apple is well aware of the fact that its customers will pony up whatever Apple charges them for their devices. People will still queue up in front of Apple Saket and Apple BKC on September 22, when the devices finally go on sale.

Apple already has a stronghold over the US market, thanks to its ubiquitous ecosystem. And while they may not have that widespread a presence in India, it has something even more potent – the advantage of being the ‘it’ brand, a brand that perfectly personifies aspiration.