It’s a universally acknowledged truth that Apple products are expensive. They have been expensive since genesis and will continue to be expensive till judgement day!
Sure, the devices are a technological marvel and the ecosystem is seamless (something every Apple fanboy will tell you unprompted), but the first thing that comes to mind when you see someone with an Apple product is that they must be loaded.
Or at least, that’s how it works in desi culture. Here, Apple products are seen as status symbols—almost a marker of success. The common man, aka ‘the aam aadmi’ aka ‘the mango people’, having been unable to afford them for so long, only ends up wanting these premium products even more.
I’m sure all of us have heard some versions of the “selling a kidney to buy an iPhone” joke at some point in our lives. The joke wasn’t very funny to begin with and its overuse certainly didn’t make it any funnier, but there’s a reason they start trending every time Apple releases a new product. Although extremely unfunny by joke standards, they are kind of true.
The Apple craze in India is so out of hand that you can buy logo stickers to slap onto your regular, non-Apple laptops, and give them an identity crisis while you’re at it. You’ll even find phone covers at local accessory shops designed to look exactly like the back of an iPhone.
All of this just goes to show that people absolutely love Apple products—or at least the idea of owning one. Not necessarily because of what they have to offer, but because of what they represent.
And now, all of a sudden, Apple seems to be changing its tune. The company, which just turned 50 this year, and has spent half a century releasing products that can do serious damage to the average Indian wallet, is turning over a new leaf. Apple has started launching products that are kind of affordable, which is surprising given how unrelenting they’ve been until now. In fact, just last year, they released a limited product—the “iPhone pocket”—essentially a glorified piece of fabric priced at around ₹20,000.
So this sudden consideration for consumers, with several budget-friendly products like the “e-series” iPhones and the all-new “MacBook Neo,” is a little hard to digest.
In all fairness, in the bigger picture, this is just a capitalist giant tapping into a market segment it had largely ignored until now. And sure, they might get a little generous and offer us mango people some more reasonably priced Apples—but it’s still putting their welfare at the forefront, not ours.
They are not handing out stuff for free, it’s only cheap in relativity with their own products and not the market competitors. However, what they have done is manage to cast a marketing spell so powerful in all these years that we are looking at borderline expensive products as budget or bargains.
Another, perhaps bigger, concern this entire endeavour raises is that if Apple continues rolling out affordable devices that everyone can own, will they start losing the aspirational brand image that they have built for themselves, especially in markets like India. I don’t think they’ll ever risk that. Apple will always be a premium brand. So, let’s count our blessings in the form of odd affordable devices that we get in between, but be prepared that Apple’s flagship models will always command a Pro or Ultra pricing.
