The iPhone 5S and its colorful sibling, the 5C were released in India on November 1 and the retailers are already finding it difficult to fulfill demands. Reportedly, people in the country prefer the 5S over the 5C and the former is out of stock through most of the major retail channels, while the latter continues to be available.
The Times of India has reported that although the demand for the iPhone 5S is high, the company had failed to provide many units of the device to the retailers in the country, to begin with. Trade estimates reveal that merely 30,000 units of the Apple smartphones arrived in India, out of which about 6000 were the 5S and the rest were the 5C. This pretty much explains why the latter is still available.
Replenishing the stocks proved to be a futile effort owing to the Diwali festival. But on Saturday, retailers asked distributors like Redington and Ingram Micro to send the remaining units. These arrived at the stores on Sunday and were sold out by Monday noon. Apparently, not many people are willing to settle for the iPhone 5C.
However, Airtel and RCom outlets have managed to sell both devices, thanks to the offers they introduced. It seems like the on-contract schemes from Reliance Communications have hit it off well with consumers in India.
Through RCom, the 16GB iPhone 5S and 5C are available with zero down payments and 24 equal monthly installments of Rs 2,599 and Rs 2,999, respectively, which includes unlimited data, calls and text for two years. Without the plans, the 5C starts at Rs 41,900, while the 5S requires you to shell out at least Rs 53,500.