Mehul Ruben DasOctober 26, 2022 14:50:15 IST
In case you have been trying to buy the iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max from an authorized retailer in Delhi NCR in the past couple of weeks, chances are you have heard from a number of retailers that the devices are not available with them. And for good reason.
While it has been announced that Apple, in an effort to reduce its reliance on China, will begin manufacturing the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro series in India. However, there have been numerous reports that Apple is not making the iPhone 14 Pro series in India, only the regular, vanilla version of the iPhone 14. The production of the iPhone 14 Plus it was suspended mainly due to lack of demand.
The devices people are looking for the most, the base variant of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, are not readily available in India, at least in Delhi-NCR. This has proved to be a golden opportunity for black market players and private sellers who are making money hands down.
Says Nilesh Kamra, one of the many mobile phone vendors operating at New Delhi’s Gaffar Market, “We are not aware of any such shortcomings, we are regularly purchasing our devices.” When asked how much the devices are selling, he said, “We sell the 128GB iPhone 14 Pro version for around Rs 1.05,000, no invoice and accept cash only.”
The same variant costs Rs 1.29.900 when you purchase it from authorized channels, with an invoice. While vendors like Nilesh claim the devices are India-ready and Apple will welcome warranty claims for these devices in India, the refusal to provide an invoice is a big red flag.
The Gaffar market is known for its electronics stores and the fact that devices such as game consoles, laptops and smartphones are sold here at much cheaper prices. The problem is that in most cases, as the products are bought in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other places in the Middle East, they are much cheaper and have no documents with them. Accordingly, Authorized Service Centers will refuse to accept any warranty claims raised on these devices.
The availability of devices in these markets is never a problem. And despite the fact that devices sold on the black market don’t have any applicable warranties or taxes and duties paid, people buy them anyway.
Because black market vendors are able to pocket a much larger chunk of the money a customer spends on a device, both private sellers and licensed resellers have started dabbing in a similar practice.
In the past, we’ve seen authorized showrooms of some Chinese smartphones, such as Vivo and Xiaomi, act similarly, first claiming they don’t have the devices and then offering the device after “fixing it from another store.” The conditions under which they will sell you? You will have to pay in cash and the bill, if provided, will be from an earlier date. However, this is the first time we’ve seen Apple devices sold in this way.
Govind Kushwaha, a salesman who works with one of Laxmi Nagar’s oldest cell phone sales centers, said, “We have been asked to turn down customers If they are looking to buy an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max with an invoice and using UPI, or credit card, or if they need an invoice. If they agree not to receive a previous invoice or invoice with a different name, we give them the phone. ”
But what if the shops don’t have phones? “We can organize it in half an hour at the most. In case the customer is willing to wait that half hour. If they intend to come back and answer the phone on another day, we ask them to pay around Rs 10,000-20,000 as an advance. Shortages are not really a problem. “
This, however, does not mean that there is no shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro series in Delhi-NCR – there is indeed a shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, mainly due to sporadic freezes in China. When a Twitter user reported Apple, the Home Office and a group of other government officials complaining that private sellers are selling iPhone 14 Pro in black, the Union’s Minister of State for Electronics and technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, replied to the tweet:
I spoke to Apple and they said that while the demand for the iPhone14 is being met with the Indian product as well, the demand for the iPhone14 Pro has increased and is facing supply constraints that they are facing.
pvt sales are probably “alternative” supply channels https://t.co/wLxJdxbFi9
– Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) October 26, 2022
To their credit, Apple is trying to overcome the situation and is trying to manage its supply chains in such a way that all its sales regions get a fair distribution of the devices.
