Apple raises product prices for Indian customers

Increasing the price is a nationwide face-palm

The fruity cargo cult Apple has decided to punish its poor Indian customers for its government daring to make it pay tax by raising its prices even more so that less people can afford them.

Apple has decided to make its products more expensive in India and price them off the market in a stunning example of “cut your nose off to spite your face” manoeuvre.

Barring its locally-assembled iPhone SE model, Apple raised prices of iPhone handsets by an average 3.5 percent, according to a price sheet reviewed by Reuters.

Its priciest iPhone X model now costs 105,720 rupees ($1,646.61) for a 256 gigabyte (GB) variant, according to Apple’s India website, an increase of 3.6 percent. The price of a 256 GB iPhone 8 has risen by 3.1 percent to 79,420 rupees. The average yearly salary in India is about $3,030 or 192,050 rupees.

For those who came in late, Apple is desperate to flog its expensive iPhones to third world countries which can’t afford them. This has become critical now that China has realised that the iPhone is an expensive turkey and you can get much more gadget value for half the price from home-based industries.

Apple turned to India and promised politicians that it would provide jobs if the Indians looked the other way when it came to tax. To be fair to Apple, this approach worked rather well in Ireland.

However, the Indians looked at the numbers and worked out that if Apple paid its tax, then it could afford to start new industries and employ more people itself.

The fruity cargo cult was furious and has decided that it would increase the price of its already overpriced products to cover the cost of the tax. We guess it thought that the population would rise up and overthrow the government so they could buy iPhones at a lower price.

Of course, it also meant that Apple, which was already pretty much priced off the market for most Indians, would be even less likely to sell. But hey, Apple is sending a message and it is up to the Indian government to do what it is told.

We suspect that the Indian government has rationally worked out that the country needs Apple in the same way that it wants an invasion by Pakistan.