Apple’s continuous efforts to convince the Indian government for temporarily putting off an increase in import duties seems to have proved futile, as reported a few days ago. The Cupertino juggernaut has today announced a marginal price bump in its iPhone prices as the government raises custom duty from 10% to 15%. The move, however, doesn’t impact the iPhone SE as it is being now assembled in the country by Wistron since June.
The majority of iPhones will sustain a surge of roughly Rs 2,000 depending on their current price across channels. It’s worth noting that this will affect the MRP of these smartphones. Hence, you should be able to still purchase iPhones at a much lower price on online as well as offline stores. The premium iPhone X will be now sold at an even higher sum, Rs 92,430 (previously Rs 89,000) for the 64GB variant and Rs 1,05,720 (previously 1,02,000) for 256GB version. You can view all the differences in the table embedded below.
Apple had requested the Indian government to exempt it from this particular tax rise on import charges concerning mobile phone parts. However, as per sources, the officials had denied any such “pre-requisites” and special incentives. “We have told them, please come and invest but we cannot do things that go beyond our policies. We cannot do things only for you,” added one senior government official familiar with the matter.
According to reports, Apple has been struggling to establish a strong foothold in India due to a series of hurdles such as pending government approvals and tax requests. Incidentally, the government has shown a keen interest in locally manufacturing Apple products and a month ago, even asked the tech giant to come up with a more workable solution.
The hike is primarily to promote the Prime Minister’s “Make in India” programme which encourages manufacturers to set up domestic plants. A range of smartphone OEMs such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and others have already set up multiple manufacturing factories in India.