this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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The answer will be that Apple won’t sell iPhones without USB-C in India at all. Have fun waiting for like, 3 years to buy a relatively inexpensive iOS device.
There's enough supply of inexpensive Android phones that support standard chargers. It's not a problem for consumers if they can't buy older models of iPhones, there are tons of other smartphones.
It definitely hurts Apple to loose out in a market as big as India's. But that's their fault. They had enough time.
There's a fad in India that having an iPhone makes you a sophisticated person.
I have colleagues who've spent more than a whole month's salary over it. They all use WhatsApp instead of Apple Messages, put on a ₹100 cover they got by bargaining at the railway station they commute to everyday for 2 hours, can't afford the wireless charger, and every 3rd person seems to have one - idk what's sophisticated about such an unexclusive device ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If this were a small country, yes that is what would happen. In the second most populous country, I suspect that's too huge of a market to just accept as a loss.
Once a customer leaves the apple ecosystem they're unlikely to return to it. So they would lose those customers forever.
Fun fact for the day: India overtook China as the most populous country at the beginning of this year.
Unfortunately, Apple's marketshare in India is tiny, so they can leave without too much loss.
Also, India is now the world's most populous country. :-(
That also means that there's still a huge potential for growth, before competitors reel in their potential customers. If they let other manufacturers divide the market among themselves, it may be harder to gain market share later.
It's a huge market even with a smaller target of people.
For a market as big as India, with it's up and coming middle class, Mr. Tim Apple would fuck a pig (with consent) on Live TV if it was what it took to keep selling there.
Why so? They have moved to USB C already.
But they’re not going to redesign all the older iPhone models to have USB-C. They’ll just stop selling those models.
Edit: and there’s no fucking way that the Indian government can successfully compel Apple to repair every iPhone 14-or-under in India. That is simply not happening.
I assumed it's new models, not retroactively fitting them, as in newly produced ones.
They’re already switching to USB-C for all the new models due to EU regulations.