Until now iPhones were a luxury to an average consumer wherein spending ₹69,900 made sense for only a few hand-selected people in a country like India. Thanks to import costs and tariffs, the prices of iPhones have skyrocketed in the past few years, the lowest iPhone 12 Mini started at ₹69,900 last year.
The new iPhone 13 Mini now starts at the same price while the very poorly rated or bought iPhone 12 Mini was undoubtedly one smartphone Apple has had some really hard times to sell. So, even though they discontinued selling the iPhone 12 Mini on their official sites but other e-commerce sites like Flipkart or Amazon sold for a lesser ₹59,900.
For that price, still buying a 5.4-inch smartphone against the likes of the OnePlus 9 series or Samsung S20 FE made no sense for an average Indian consumer. Now, comes Flipkart’s biggest annual sale of the year – Big Billion Days Sale 2021, which started just a week ago.
I still remember when we were writing about the deals for half an hour we were just blabbering seeing the prices of both iPhone 12 Mini and regular iPhone 12. Yes, the iPhone 12 Mini was sold at just ₹36,999, add the ICICI or Axis Bank discount the effective price was only ₹33,999, a flat almost 50% discount that too on an iPhone!
At first, I thought this was a glitch and Flipkart was fooling us, however, when I saw the product page and tried to order, I saw this was indeed real. On the other hand, the regular iPhone 12’s price was slashed to only ₹48,999 and with Bank offers the effective price was only ₹46,999.
Also, for the first hour of the sale from 12 AM to 1 AM, Flipkart totally became freeze and we weren’t able to order, so, I, fortunately, got the Purple base variant of the iPhone 12 Mini for ₹34k with bank offers as fast as possible. Then, in just 2 hours of the sale, Flipkart increased the pricing of both of the smartphones to ₹37,999 and ₹49,999 for both iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 respectively.
@rahul_roy got the iPhone for ₹47,999 the next day and we got both of the discounted iPhone 12s in a day. However, we were a bit sceptical if the smartphone would be legit or not and guess what, all of these iPhones were perfect and Flipkart delivered them very fast.
Well, I have got the iPhone 12 Mini for over a week now, and indeed getting the rare Purple variant for a steal price is obviously a proud thing for me and a lot of people who have bought older yet very capable iPhone 12s in the Big Billion Days sale. I preassume that these variants might be Made in India, however, to my surprise they were Made in China.
This means even though these iPhones were charged wholly with taxes and tariffs, Apple might have given huge stocks of less-selling iPhone 12 Minis to Flipkart at their cost prices rather than the extra “Apple tax” we generally pay for the product.
While Apple didn’t make a lot of profit with this move but did get two benefits: 1. Sold all the outstanding iPhone 12 Minis without bearing many losses, 2. In the process, it has got more consumers into the Apple ecosystem which for an average Indian user might be impossible.
Another theory @anupammodak02 was telling me might be Apple is seeing the potential of the Indian market if iPhones are sold at a more affordable cost. It is worthy to note that Apple in future with its partners like Foxconn will make iPhones locally in India, so, eventually prices will get reduced in the coming years.
However, I will share my experience with the legit iPhone 12 Mini I bought from Flipkart for a week now in Part 2 of this series of articles! Still, want to have the iPhone 12 Mini? Get it now for ₹40,999: http://fkrt.it/XXIUmCNNNN
