Following a hike of 5% in import taxes on smartphones, Apple phones have gotten more expensive in India. The hike was just announced a few days back on appliances including imported televisions, video cameras and mobile phones. It is understood that this move is to energize the “Make in India” initiative of the government. As it is, the iPhone X was priced exorbitantly higher in India than its standard $1000 price. When launched, the iPhone X cost Rs 89,000, which translates to around $1400. Now we have another bump in that price tag.
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With the tax hike, the entire iPhone lineup that is for sale will get more expensive except for the iPhone SE. To put things into perspective, the iPhone X 256 GB now costs Rs 1,05,700 as opposed to Rs 1,02,000 earlier. Other models like the iPhone 8 64 GB costs Rs 66,120, whereas earlier it cost Rs 64,000. Even the iPhone 6 which cost less than 30k is now costing Rs 30,780. We do have a full list of the price changes if you want to give it a glance.
The prices mentioned here are the maximum retail prices. If you look around, there can be lower online and offline prices available with cash back offers. The 5% price hike isn’t expected to hit Apple very hard as iPhones are sold to the premium segment in India. However, the hike comes at a bad time when Apple revenues have been hit a 6-year low.