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Is Indian Apple Store Hype Justified?

It takes an Indian minimum wage worker twice as long to afford an Apple iPhone 12 as his Pakistani counterpart.....

Riaz bhai, it's a good thing businessmen do not follow such metrics to analyse a market's potential. If one were to go by such numbers, no one will sell anything in India. Averaging out on such a massive population is extremely counter intuitive to say the least. Going by your logic there wouldn't be assembly of a single luxury car in India, whereas most luxury brands are here and doing decent enough business, even if everyone is not a Maruti. Going by your logic ultra luxury apartments would be a hype because Paitoo would need to work as a slave for 200 years to afford it, however in reality they are being built LRC and people are lapping it up. Stupid builders I say. Stupid LVMH too, because they just keep on expanding with their luxury products in every damn mall I can see.

Businessmen for luxury products do not look at the fat middle of the bell curve but the small tapering right end of it. If they like what they see, they will invest. The upper middle class and upwards population of India is more than the entire population of many countries. Apple doesn't give a rat's a$$ about Indian's per capita GDP. They just need to know how many fat cats are sitting at the right end of the bell curve.

This is not about Pakistan or India but basic business sense. This is also the reason luxury brands exist in Pakistan. Apple is not uprooting some village to set up its store in India. It is not EITHER / OR. We can have street shitters and we can have Iphone owners at the same time. Does not take rocket science to understand this. If companies were to shove every business plan up their a$$e$ every time someone whipped out a photo of a starving person, entire economies would collapse.

On a side note, I don't personally give a damn about this Apple store. We have had apple products being sold officially through their smaller stores for ages now. I am not sure what the hype really is. This is an age of hyper promotions and re-sharing every damn thing, so its understandable. But I will not use this as an opportunity to self inflict some sanctimonious BS on myself.
 
Lot of hype about #Apple store in #India but how long does an #Indian have to work to afford an #iPhone? Here’s a comparison. #Pakistan #AppleStore #Delhi #Mumbai




It takes an Indian minimum wage worker twice as long to afford an Apple iPhone 12 as his Pakistani counterpart. A minimum wage Pakistani has to work 1,642 hours, or about 10 months of work, to buy an iPhone 12, according to Bloomberg News. An Indian minimum worker, on the other hand, must work nearly twice as long, a total of 3,254 hours, to buy it. It takes 1,791 hours in Indonesia and 2,045 hours in Egypt. Assuming a 40-hour work-week and two weeks of vacation, there are 2,000 hours of work in a year. Given these figures, it can be safely assumed that very few minimum wage workers in the developing world can afford to buy an iPhone 12.


Bloomberg reported the following on February 4 as follows: "Based on minimum wage levels, a new report from Grover.com estimates it would take 6,639 hours for a Venezuelan to earn enough for the prized smartphone and 3,254 hours for an Indian. Chinese people must work 680 hours to make enough money".


International Labor Organization's Global Wage Report 2020-21 reported that the minimum wage in Pakistan is $491 a month in purchasing power parity, the highest in South Asia. India's minimum wage is $215 a month, less than half of Pakistan's.

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Inequality Report 2022. There is rising poverty and hunger. Nearly 230 million middle class Indians have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty. India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. Meanwhile, the wealth of Indian billionaires jumped by 35% during the pandemic.

Neoliberal policies in emerging markets like India have spurred economic growth in last few decades. However, the gains from this rapid growth have been heavily skewed in favor of the rich. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have languished. The average per capita income in India has tripled in recent decades but the minimum dietary intake has fallen. According to the World Food Program, a quarter of the world's undernourished people live in India. The COVID19 pandemic has further widened the gap between the rich and poor.

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Unkil check

 
Lot of hype about #Apple store in #India but how long does an #Indian have to work to afford an #iPhone? Here’s a comparison. #Pakistan #AppleStore #Delhi #Mumbai




It takes an Indian minimum wage worker twice as long to afford an Apple iPhone 12 as his Pakistani counterpart. A minimum wage Pakistani has to work 1,642 hours, or about 10 months of work, to buy an iPhone 12, according to Bloomberg News. An Indian minimum worker, on the other hand, must work nearly twice as long, a total of 3,254 hours, to buy it. It takes 1,791 hours in Indonesia and 2,045 hours in Egypt. Assuming a 40-hour work-week and two weeks of vacation, there are 2,000 hours of work in a year. Given these figures, it can be safely assumed that very few minimum wage workers in the developing world can afford to buy an iPhone 12.


Bloomberg reported the following on February 4 as follows: "Based on minimum wage levels, a new report from Grover.com estimates it would take 6,639 hours for a Venezuelan to earn enough for the prized smartphone and 3,254 hours for an Indian. Chinese people must work 680 hours to make enough money".


International Labor Organization's Global Wage Report 2020-21 reported that the minimum wage in Pakistan is $491 a month in purchasing power parity, the highest in South Asia. India's minimum wage is $215 a month, less than half of Pakistan's.

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Inequality Report 2022. There is rising poverty and hunger. Nearly 230 million middle class Indians have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty. India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. Meanwhile, the wealth of Indian billionaires jumped by 35% during the pandemic.

Neoliberal policies in emerging markets like India have spurred economic growth in last few decades. However, the gains from this rapid growth have been heavily skewed in favor of the rich. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have languished. The average per capita income in India has tripled in recent decades but the minimum dietary intake has fallen. According to the World Food Program, a quarter of the world's undernourished people live in India. The COVID19 pandemic has further widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Related Links:
Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan Among World's Largest Food Producers
Naya Pakistan Housing Program
Food in Pakistan 2nd Cheapest in the World

Indian Economy Grew Just 0.2% Annually in Last Two Years
Pakistan to Become World's 6th Largest Cement Producer by 2030
Has Bangladesh Really Left India and Pakistan Behind?

Pakistan Projected to Be World's 7th Largest Consumer Market

Coronavirus, Lives and Livelihoods in Pakistan

Vast Majority of Pakistanis Support Imran Khan's Handling of Covid19 Crisis

Pakistani-American Woman Featured in Netflix Documentary "Pandemic"

Incomes of Poorest Pakistanis Growing Faster Than Their Richest Counterparts

Can Pakistan Effectively Respond to Coronavirus Outbreak?

How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?

Pakistan's Sehat Card Health Insurance Program

Trump Picks Muslim-American to Lead Vaccine Effort

COVID Lockdown Decimates India's Middle Class

Pakistan Child Health Indicators

Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis

How Has India Built Large Forex Reserves Despite Perennial Trade Deficits

India's Unemployment and Hunger Crises"

PTI Triumphs Over Corrupt Dynastic Political Parties

Strikingly Similar Narratives of Donald Trump and Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif's Report Card

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network
Minimum wage in Australia at 2100 USD per month is bulshit. Australia minimum wage is also different between cities
 
#Indian official empties #dam to retrieve lost #phone. It took 3 days to pump millions of litres of #water out of the dam, after Rajesh Vishwas dropped the device while taking a selfie. By the time it was found, the phone was too water-logged to work. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65726193


A government official in India has been suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained to retrieve his phone.

It took three days to pump millions of litres of water out of the dam, after Rajesh Vishwas dropped the device while taking a selfie.

By the time it was found, the phone was too water-logged to work.

Mr Vishwas claimed it contained sensitive government data and needed retrieving, but he has been accused of misusing his position.

The food inspector dropped his Samsung phone, worth about $1,200 (100,000 rupees), into Kherkatta Dam, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, on Sunday.

After local divers failed to find it, he paid for a diesel pump to be brought in, Mr Vishwas said in a video statement quoted in Indian media.

He said he had verbal permission from an official to drain "some water into a nearby canal", adding that the official said it "would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water".

The pump ran for several days, emptying out some two million litres (440,000 gallons) of water - reportedly enough to irrigate 6 sq km (600 hectares) of farmland.

His mission was stopped when another official, from the water resource department, arrived following a complaint.

"He has been suspended until an inquiry. Water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this," Priyanka Shukla, a Kanker district official, told The National newspaper.

Mr Vishwas has denied misusing his position, and said that the water he drained was from the overflow section of the dam and "not in usable condition".

But his actions have drawn criticism from politicians, with the state's opposition BJP party's national Vice-President tweeting, "When people are depending upon tankers for water facility in in scorching summers, the officer has drained 41 lakh litres which could have been used for irrigation purpose for 1,500 acres of land."
 
Lot of hype about #Apple store in #India but how long does an #Indian have to work to afford an #iPhone? Here’s a comparison. #Pakistan #AppleStore #Delhi #Mumbai




It takes an Indian minimum wage worker twice as long to afford an Apple iPhone 12 as his Pakistani counterpart. A minimum wage Pakistani has to work 1,642 hours, or about 10 months of work, to buy an iPhone 12, according to Bloomberg News. An Indian minimum worker, on the other hand, must work nearly twice as long, a total of 3,254 hours, to buy it. It takes 1,791 hours in Indonesia and 2,045 hours in Egypt. Assuming a 40-hour work-week and two weeks of vacation, there are 2,000 hours of work in a year. Given these figures, it can be safely assumed that very few minimum wage workers in the developing world can afford to buy an iPhone 12.


Bloomberg reported the following on February 4 as follows: "Based on minimum wage levels, a new report from Grover.com estimates it would take 6,639 hours for a Venezuelan to earn enough for the prized smartphone and 3,254 hours for an Indian. Chinese people must work 680 hours to make enough money".


International Labor Organization's Global Wage Report 2020-21 reported that the minimum wage in Pakistan is $491 a month in purchasing power parity, the highest in South Asia. India's minimum wage is $215 a month, less than half of Pakistan's.

India is one of the most unequal countries in the world, according to the World Inequality Report 2022. There is rising poverty and hunger. Nearly 230 million middle class Indians have slipped below the poverty line, constituting a 15 to 20% increase in poverty. India ranks 94th among 107 nations ranked by World Hunger Index in 2020. Other South Asians have fared better: Pakistan (88), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Sri Lanka (64) and Myanmar (78) – and only Afghanistan has fared worse at 99th place. Meanwhile, the wealth of Indian billionaires jumped by 35% during the pandemic.

Neoliberal policies in emerging markets like India have spurred economic growth in last few decades. However, the gains from this rapid growth have been heavily skewed in favor of the rich. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have languished. The average per capita income in India has tripled in recent decades but the minimum dietary intake has fallen. According to the World Food Program, a quarter of the world's undernourished people live in India. The COVID19 pandemic has further widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Related Links:
Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan Among World's Largest Food Producers
Naya Pakistan Housing Program
Food in Pakistan 2nd Cheapest in the World

Indian Economy Grew Just 0.2% Annually in Last Two Years
Pakistan to Become World's 6th Largest Cement Producer by 2030
Has Bangladesh Really Left India and Pakistan Behind?

Pakistan Projected to Be World's 7th Largest Consumer Market

Coronavirus, Lives and Livelihoods in Pakistan

Vast Majority of Pakistanis Support Imran Khan's Handling of Covid19 Crisis

Pakistani-American Woman Featured in Netflix Documentary "Pandemic"

Incomes of Poorest Pakistanis Growing Faster Than Their Richest Counterparts

Can Pakistan Effectively Respond to Coronavirus Outbreak?

How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?

Pakistan's Sehat Card Health Insurance Program

Trump Picks Muslim-American to Lead Vaccine Effort

COVID Lockdown Decimates India's Middle Class

Pakistan Child Health Indicators

Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis

How Has India Built Large Forex Reserves Despite Perennial Trade Deficits

India's Unemployment and Hunger Crises"

PTI Triumphs Over Corrupt Dynastic Political Parties

Strikingly Similar Narratives of Donald Trump and Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif's Report Card

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

hm, you have proved Apple, Tim Cook and his marketing team are all stupid. They should have put the store in Pindi where the natives have to "work" for less than 3 seconds to afford a iPhone Pro.
 
India: What the smartphone market tells us about its economy - BBC News


https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65491090

According to research firm the International Data Corporation (IDC), 31m smartphones were shipped in India during the first three months of this year.

That was 16% lower than in the same period of 2022 and the lowest first-quarter shipments in four years.

IDC highlighted that the sluggish demand came amid an uncertain economic outlook and as stockpiles of handsets remain high.

It also said that India's overall smartphone market will be flat this year after three quarters in a row of falling sales.

At the same time some analysts have pointed to the growing trend of "premiumisation" - when wealthier consumers move towards more expensive products.

"The premium segment's share almost doubled" in the first three months of this year compared to a year ago, according to Prachir Singh from technology market research firm Counterpoint.

However, as brands like Apple and Samsung benefit from this trend, demand for cheaper handsets made by companies like China's Xiaomi and Realme has been hit by the tough economic environment.

That end of the market is suffering as users take longer to upgrade their handsets, experts say.

The stark contrast between Apple's fortunes and the shrinking market for cheaper devices also reflects an uneven post-pandemic recovery in Asia's third largest economy.

"The K-shaped recovery is not allowing the consumption demand to become broad-based nor helping the wage growth especially of the population belonging to the lower half of the income pyramid," India Ratings and Research said.

"As a result, while there is visible demand for high-end automobiles, mobile phones and other luxury items, demand for items of mass consumption is still subdued," it added.

For example, sales of entry-level scooters were down by almost 20% in April this year, compared to the same month in 2019, before the pandemic hit.

This indicates that lower income customers "were are still hesitant to upgrade," according Manish Raj Singhania, the president of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations.

It also reflects the on-going problems in India's rural economy, which have been worsened by extreme weather events.

Lack of demand in rural areas has also been driving the decline in the consumer goods, like snacks and fizzy drinks, where growth has dropped to single figures after a year and a half of double-digit increases.

Household spending on goods and services, which had grown 20% year on year in March 2022, has also slowed sharply this year.

That came as India's consumers have been squeezed by rising interest rates and stubbornly high inflation.

Overall, the country's economic growth slowed to 4.1% for the first three months of 2023, the lowest growth for a year, official figures show.
 
Obviously it is, India is not a communist nation. It is quasi Capitalist with a flavor of socialism.
There is a relatively large population of urban middle and upper middle class. Students in university prefer apple products nowadays especially ipad or the macbook. The population is enough to cater demand.
I'm myself looking at a Apple Air 5.
What flavour of socialism?
 
Unemployment in India



High #Unemployment in #India: While people under the age of 25 account for more than 40% of India’s population, almost half of them – 45.8% – were unemployed as of December 2022. #Modi #BJP #economy #poverty #hunger Hindutva #Islamophobia


Too few jobs, too many workers and ‘no plan B’: The time bomb hidden in India’s ‘economic miracle’

Sunil Kumar knows all about working hard to achieve a dream. The 28-year-old from India’s Haryana state already has two degrees – a bachelor’s and a master’s – and is working on a third, all with a view to landing a well-paid job in one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

“I studied so that I can be successful in life,” he said. “When you work hard, you should be able to get a job.”

Kumar does now have a job, but it’s not the one he studied for – and definitely not the one he dreamed about.

He has spent the past five years sweeping the floors of a school in his village, a full-time job he supplements with a less lucrative side hustle tutoring younger students. All told, he makes about $85 a month.

It’s not much, he concedes, especially as he needs to support two aging parents and a sister, but it is all he has. Ideally, he says, he’d work as a teacher and put his degrees to use. Instead, “I have to do manual labor just to be able to feed myself.”

Kumar’s situation is not unusual, but a predicament faced by millions of other young Indians. Youth unemployment in the country is climbing sharply, a development that risks undermining the new darling of the world economy at the very moment it was expected to really take off.

India’s newfound status as the world’s most populous nation had prompted hopes of a youthful new engine for the global economy just as China’s population begins to dwindle and age. Unlike China’s, India’s working age population is young, growing, and projected to hit a billion over the next decade – a vast pool of labor and consumption that one Biden administration official has called an “economic miracle.”

But for young Indians like Kumar, there’s a flip side to this so-called miracle: too few jobs and too much competition.

In contrast to China, where economists fear there won’t be enough workers to support the growing number of elderly, in India the concern is there aren’t enough jobs to support the growing number of workers.

While people under the age of 25 account for more than 40% of India’s population, almost half of them – 45.8% – were unemployed as of December 2022, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank headquartered in Mumbai, which publishes job data more regularly than the Indian government.

Some analysts have described the situation to CNN as a “time bomb”, warning of the potential for social unrest unless more employment can be created.

Kumar, like others in his position, knows all too well the frustrations that can build when work is scarce.

“I get very angry that I don’t have a successful job despite my qualifications and education,” he said. “I blame the government for this. It should give work to its people.”

The bad news for people like Kumar, and the Indian government, is that experts warn the problem will only get worse as the population grows and competition for jobs gets even tougher.

Kaushik Basu, an economics professor at Cornell University and former chief economic adviser for the Indian government, described India’s youth unemployment rate as “shockingly high.”

It’s been “climbing slowly for a long time, say for about 15 years it’s been on a slow climb but over the past seven, eight years it’s been a sharp climb,” he said.

“If that category of people do not find enough employment,” Basu added, “then what was meant to be an opportunity, the bulge in that demographic dividend, could become a huge challenge and problem for India.”
 
Lot of hype about #Apple store in #India but how long does an #Indian have to work to afford an #iPhone? Here’s a comparison. #Pakistan #AppleStore #Delhi #Mumbai




It takes an Indian minimum wage worker twice as long to afford an Apple iPhone 12 as his Pakistani counterpart

I never knew Apple was targeting a minimum wage worker in India
 
As a long time Apple shareholder I see Apple selling 20-30 million iPhones in India
First hand per year? At what average price point? Also, will aspiration; looking successful drive sales, or are consumers pulling back in what could be a major global recession later this year? How sensitive is the middle class Indian consumer spending towards global economic trends?
 
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Unemployment in India

While people under the age of 25 account for more than 40% of India’s population, almost half of them – 45.8% – were unemployed as of December 2022, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank headquartered in Mumbai, which publishes job data more regularly than the Indian government.
Just trying to understand your bit here, so a guy should skip school and college education and seek employment? Do you even understand demographic age distribution? Are you expecting a 12-13 year old to be employed?

Such a fucking joke these pakistani economists are.
 
if a backward country wants to develop it must allow foreign and domestic companies to make their own rules and pay no taxes

otherwise no respectable entity wants to invest in 3rd world
 
Riaz bhai, it's a good thing businessmen do not follow such metrics to analyse a market's potential. If one were to go by such numbers, no one will sell anything in India. Averaging out on such a massive population is extremely counter intuitive to say the least. Going by your logic there wouldn't be assembly of a single luxury car in India, whereas most luxury brands are here and doing decent enough business, even if everyone is not a Maruti. Going by your logic ultra luxury apartments would be a hype because Paitoo would need to work as a slave for 200 years to afford it, however in reality they are being built LRC and people are lapping it up. Stupid builders I say. Stupid LVMH too, because they just keep on expanding with their luxury products in every damn mall I can see.

Businessmen for luxury products do not look at the fat middle of the bell curve but the small tapering right end of it. If they like what they see, they will invest. The upper middle class and upwards population of India is more than the entire population of many countries. Apple doesn't give a rat's a$$ about Indian's per capita GDP. They just need to know how many fat cats are sitting at the right end of the bell curve.

This is not about Pakistan or India but basic business sense. This is also the reason luxury brands exist in Pakistan. Apple is not uprooting some village to set up its store in India. It is not EITHER / OR. We can have street shitters and we can have Iphone owners at the same time. Does not take rocket science to understand this. If companies were to shove every business plan up their a$$e$ every time someone whipped out a photo of a starving person, entire economies would collapse.

On a side note, I don't personally give a damn about this Apple store. We have had apple products being sold officially through their smaller stores for ages now. I am not sure what the hype really is. This is an age of hyper promotions and re-sharing every damn thing, so its understandable. But I will not use this as an opportunity to self inflict some sanctimonious BS on myself.

I have been a lifelong Android/Microsoft follower and don't feel the need for Apple products or their proprietary "easy use" hype.

There is a reason why small third world countries like mine can benefit by producing their own Android/Microsoft hardware and which benefits our own economies, after paying a nominal licensing fee. It also ensures that PCs are accessible to even the most needy households, so that they can get educated in online education opportunities.

This is a UNIFY brand All in One PC available in Bangladesh, components made 90% locally (except the Intel Chip and some peripherals. Assembly was also local. I prefer this local value addition over popularizing and incentivizing sale of Apple's brand-name which does not help one iota of the economy of my own country.

AIO-1-1920x600.jpg



Needy households can also buy 10.5" Walton Android Tablet or any number of high power or budget laptops, including those for gaming, all made locally in Bangladesh, with a higher degree of local made computer components than anything made in India. Ditto for printers.

Icon%20Image-500x500.png
image


image


So I don't understand all this hype about promoting Apple products. Focus should be on increasing local online citizenship and education at a lower cost and not blind pointless salivation over name-brand products-du-jour which has become a disease of sorts in India these days to beat the next door neighbor or colleague. One had to say it, I'm sorry.
 
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