Three mobile phone operators in India — AIS, Dtac, TrueMove — will begin selling the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus on Oct 21. But they’re pricey.
As CNBC reported, the new handsets cost more than the average Indian citizen earns in six months due to local import taxes which jack up retail price of the entry-level $649 32GB iPhone 7 to as high as $900 — and $1,382 for the flagship 256GB iPhone 7 Plus model. World Bank estimates that an annual salary for a person in India in 2015 was $1,581.60 versus an annual salary of $55,836.80 for an average U.S. citizen.
“The biggest challenge for Apple today is that the tariffs that India imposes on imported phones greatly increases the pricing of iPhones in India, Gartner’s research vice president Mark Hung told CNBC’s Street Signs today.
