Airtel is confident the youth will buy the phone using their savings or convince their parents of the merits of handing them a phone worth Rs 30,000. One such youth with extremely benevolent parents is MBA student Rohit. “It is a little too expensive, but my old phone is now so battered that I desperately needed a new one.” His friends on the other hand said they were just spectators. “We don’t have that kind of money. We’re just spectators,” says Mohit Sharma. It would be easier, and cheaper, to just use Rohit’s phone, Agni Chatterjee chips in.
Kapoor feels genuine users will not turn towards the grey markets. “An iPhone user is purchasing it for the overall experience. We are working on installment schemes.”
For India, which has so long been denied the original, it is safe to say this new pricing strategy is nothing short of cruel. Steve Job’s “twice the speed for half the price” phone, at the very best will be half the speed and four times the price in India.