The Indian government increased the import duty on mobile phones quite recently and its impact can already be seen. As a result of the hike, iPhone prices have increased quite a bit across the their lineup in India. iPhone SE has been excluded from the list as it is made in India itself and is benefited by local manufacturing.
Under the Make in India initiative, the government has managed to ensure that the majority of the smartphones sold in the country are assembled here itself. Now that has been achieved, the import taxes were increased from 10 percent to 15 percent last week. This decision affected all the smartphone companies that import their units from outside of India, including Apple.
Only the iPhone SE is currently being manufactured locally which stays unaffected by the duty hike. After the implementation of GST back in July, Apple had, in fact, lowered the iPhone prices by up to Rs. 6,600, iPad by Rs. 3,900, and Macs by Rs. 11,800. But they have now been upped significantly yet again.
The maximum price hike of Rs. 3,720 can be seen in the 256GB variant of the iPhone X which will now retail for Rs. 1,05,720, up from Rs. 1,02,000. Its 64GB variant got a hike of Rs. 3,430, while the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus will now retail from Rs. 66,120 and Rs. 75,450 respectively, against their launch of Rs. 64,000 and Rs. 73,000.
Even the lower end iPhones, that bring a substantial amount of sales for Apple here in India, have got their prices increased. The iPhone 6S prices are up by Rs. 1,550 while the number is Rs. 1,810 for the iPhone 7. After the price hike, the iPhone 7 will start from Rs. 50,810 and the iPhone 7 Plus will start from Rs. 61,060.
It is worth noting that the prices mentioned here are the MRP set by the company for its devices. You may find the Apple iPhones retailing for much lower at a local or an online store. At the time of publishing this report, the online stores haven’t updated the iPhone prices yet to reflect the price hike. You can still go buy one while the iPhone units with older prices are available.
