Apple to triple retail presence in India by 2015, own stores still improbable

After realizing India’s potential, Apple is now acting to catch up with rival Samsung. The latest sign of Apple’s new-found interest: a Tuesday report claiming the iPhone maker plans to open 200 exclusive stores in the country, tripling the number of locations now available to India’s mobile consumers.

The push into retailing for Apple reportedly includes importing suppliers to help local franchisers adopt the iconic sleek glass design of other locations selling iPhones, iPads and other devices from the Cupertino firm. Apple’s retail efforts follow a turn-around in iPhone sales marked by direct-to-consumer sales and other marketing adjustments…

“Apple has sold more iPhones in India since November than they did in the last four years,” an unnamed owner of an Apple premium reseller told the Times of India.

During that time, Apple’s smartphone market share in India increased to 15.6 percent during October through December, up from just 3.9 percent the previous quarter. The successes of its marketing changes may provide a reasons for the move to triple Apple’s retail locations in India from 65 to 200 over the next two years.

That doesn’t mean building own brick-and-mortar stores in the 1.25 billion people market.

Per government regulations, branded stores are required to carry as much as thirty percent of products from Indian companies. That’s why Apple’s retail strategy in India revolves around the concept of franchising.

At Apple’s largest reseller in India, Reliance Retail, they are seeking to expand their stores from the current 20 and looking at new locations ranging from 800-2,000 square-feet.

The chain will “be remodeled with newer fixtures that Apple uses in some of its best stores internationally to provide a far superior consumer experience,” Reliance Digital CEO Brian Bade told the Times.

Apple’s increased attention to India is not without obstacles. Although Apple has tripled its market share, Korea’s Samsung still has more than 38 percent of the smartphone sales.

Feeding that strong presence is a distribution network in India which includes 500 stores known as “Samsung Smartphone Cafes” and an additional 350 Samsung Plaza locations which display the firm’s entire product family.

Images via Indostan.ru.

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Galaxy S4 is pricier to build than iPhone 5

Ah, the cost of competition. Samsung’s recently unveiled Galaxy S4 may raise the bar for Apple, but it comes at a price. The new smartphone isn’t expected to launch until April, however we already know how much it cost the South Korean company to build its latest device: $244.

According to IHS Suppli, parts and manufacturing for a 16GB S4 not only cost more than the current Galaxy S3, but also seventeen percent higher than an iPhone 5 with sixteen gigabytes of storage. Seems Samsung is encountering the same financial challenges as Apple when it comes to ensuring your handset remains technologically in step with competitors…

Per usual, the estimate excludes costs associated with R&D, marketing, shipping, advertising, licensing fees and any other cost not directly associated with procuring and building components for the device.

Along with a record number of sensors, the higher build cost for the S4 is also due to “a larger, full-definition display and a beefed-up Samsung processor,” IHS senior analyst Vincent Leung told the Wall Street Journal in a written statement.

As we reported earlier this month, the S4 unveiled by Samsung in New York City includes a five-inch Super AMOLED display maxing out at the native full HD resolution of 1,920-by-1,080 pixels at a whopping 441ppi.

It also sports either an eight-core Samsung Exynos 5 or quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor (depending on the territory), LTE support and eight built-in sensors, including a pedometer and IR and temperature sensors.

All enclosed in a case very similar to the Galaxy S3.

It will be available by end of April, but price points haven’t been disclosed yet.

In remarks which harken back to comments on Apple’s incremental hardware changes, one analyst described the S4 as “an evolutionary product rather than a revolutionary one.” Despite the lack of surprises, analyst Mark Newman with Sanford C. Bernstein said the new Galaxy smartphone will “raise the bar for upcoming products from its competitors.”

Samsung has not raised the bar, but the pace of mobile technology itself. Forbes contributor opines that the Galaaxy S4 launch could help Samsung “unseat Apple as king of innovation.”

As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices, demands on the hardware accelerate as well.

This includes a roomier display, compatibility with faster wireless networks for transmitting larger chunks of data, as well as beefier processors able to move that data around complex apps. Likewise, as hardware requirements ramp up, so will costs for the manufacturer.

We’ve seen this happen with Apple and the iPhone 5.

iPhone 5 bill of materials courtesy of IHS iSuppli.

All of which makes the eventual price tag for the S4 intriguing.

Will the price be higher than the iPhone 5, thus losing the audience of seeking a more inexpensive alternative to the iPhone that is still technologically equivalent?

Or perhaps the S4 will price-match its predecessor, thereby reducing profit margins and the ability to splurge on marketing and other brand awareness campaigns against Apple?

Yet, again, the two rivals are facing similar choices – ones that will only grow in difficulty as competitors seek emerging markets, such as India.

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