Buying iphone in India: The (cheap) Alternative
By Natraj Muthukrishnan on 12 October, 2009, 3:15 pm
In a country with close to 350 450 million mobile users, it is indeed a pain for the mobile users that using the mobile phone ranked as the best in the world is beyond the reach of the majority. Yes, I am talking about the Apple iphones. Even after more than a year of its launch worldwide, it was not at all available in India and when it became available in late 2008, it is priced at a unaffordable Rs31,000 for 8 GB phone and Rs36,000 for a 16GB phone. Hence, the only option available for the average Indian is to buy the phone from USA or any other foreign country and then to break the contract. And I can tell you, this is no easy business. Thankfully there is another option.
There is indeed a second hand market for used phones in India which has quite a large base. You are likely to find attractive high-end phones that are barely a few months old at a price that is a fraction of the original cost. For example, a 3 month old i-phone will cost you 30% lesser than the new one and a 6 month old, 50%. These second hand markets or grey markets also sell fresh phones which have been brought from other countries with the code broken and ready for use in India.
A search and a post in sulekha.com got me the information of such phones available new also. A 3 G phone with 8 GB memory is costing Rs23,500 while a 16GB will cost you Rs26,000. Though like a typical grey market product, there is no guarantee on these. But considering the fact that as soon as you break the code of i phone the warranty goes off, this offer doesn’t seem to be bad at all.
The second hand mobile market in India, lovingly called the chor bazaar has immense business potential and serves as the right choice for the middle class Indian public who cannot afford the highly expensive iphones which have been launched at a low price in US but for some reason have been kept very expensive in India.
PS: This article is to showcase the potential these grey markets have in a time where mobile phones become unaffordable. This article is not to recommend users to buy grey market iPhones or imported jail broken iphones. We are just touching upon high end mobile handset market in India. Any thoughts ?
Hey friend can u please send me the contact details of the person. I want to buy iPhone as well.