Will Apple iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C woo Indians

BANGALORE, INDIA: The countdown has began for the much awaited launch of Apples new smartphones iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, in INdia. The launch will take place in multiple cites tomorrow (Friday).

Apple resellers Redington and Ingram Micro will be releasing the new smartphones at special launching events.

As reported, the iPhone 5s will be available for Rs. 53,500 for the 16GB model, Rs. 62,500 for the 32GB model and Rs. 71,500 for the 64GB model. iPhone 5c will be available for Rs. 41,900 for the 16GB model and Rs. 53,500 for the 32GB model. All prices are inclusive of all taxes.

Apart from Apple resellers, mobile operators RCom and Airtel have confirmed the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C offering to customers starting November 1.

Apple has reportedly sold 33.797 million iPhones (up from 26.91 million in the year-ago quarter), riding the release of the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S to a new quarterly sales record. However, its profit margins overall are down from 40 percent to 37 percent.

Commenting on the scheduled release of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, Tarun Pathak, telcom analyst with Cyber Media Research(CMR) said: "There are three set of consumers waiting for the new Apple iPhone launch, One who are "hardcore Apple fans" and will buy the device without even evaluating options from competitors. Secondly, it will be "high end smartphone buyer" who has no brand connect but wants to replace its existing high end Smartphone and thirdly it will be "aspirational ones" who will not go for the iPhone 5S and 5c but will definitely go for the discounted iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

Though the phones are launching tomorrow, the official price for the iPhone 5S and 5c was announced by Apple India two weeks back which has cleared a lot of speculations but at the same time gave a lot of time for the vendors like Samsung to access the demand and position its competing product (Samsung Note 3 ) in the market. This might be the reason we saw a price cut as far as Samsung Note 3 is concerned.

"On the whole I don't see any drastic rise in shipments of Apple as we saw during the EMI and Cash back scheme period.This may be attributed to the fact that even the high end smartphone market has increased but at the same time competition has also increased there by giving more options to the buyers, " Pathak said.

The Market Share of Apple in terms of unit shipments during July-Aug 13 was 2.0 pc .The overall Smartphone market during July-Aug 13 was 7.3Mn Units.

However, the market share of Apple in terms of unit shipments during July-Aug 12 was 0.8 pc.The overall smartphone market during July-Aug 12 was 2.7 mn units.

According to CMR July-Aug 13 data, the market standing of Apple Inc competitors in Indian smartphone market is as under:- Samsung = 32.1 pc , Micromax = 20.4 pc, Karbonn = 9.9pc, Nokia = 5.4pc and Sony 4.2 pc.