Release of Iphone delayed in India by not so gray greys

Jed — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 03:22:43 +0000

The Telegraph of Calcutta, India, reported this Thursday that Apple has delayed the release of the now famous iPhone in India until mid 2008. Although India is one of the world’s fastest growing cell phone markets, release of the iPhone is being delayed until a year after US release and half a year after release in Europe. The Telegraph attributes the delay to Apple’s fears of gray market sales and compares the situation to that of the iPod about which it says “official sales of the iPod are dwarfed by indistinguishable lookalikes in the grey market.” Clearly the Telegraph was not referring to gray market sales but to counterfeits and look alike knock offs. Rumor has it that the iPhone’s activation mechanism will prevent traditional parallel market sales. Only time will tell. Unfortunately for Indian consumes that time won’t arrive for a while.

Indian parallel market in memory cards impacted by drop in duties.

Jed — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:56:58 +0000

As with any market, costs govern the price and the profits. The Economic Times of India reports that the Indian government has cut the duty on memory cards, usb drives and memory sticks from 21% to 4%. The three leading memory card vendors in India, Kingston, Transcend and Sandisk are expected to cut their prices by 15% in the coming months. This drop in price is expected to weaken, but not destroy, the thriving parallel market which currently constitute 95% of all memory card sales in India. Due to the restrictive nature of the Indian market, most parallel market memory cards are smuggled into the country thereby evading any payment of duties. The price reduction will more than cut in half the parallel market price advantage.

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Release of Iphone delayed in India by not so gray greys

Indian parallel market in memory cards impacted by drop in duties.