KOLKATA: Apple has completely sold out its premium iPhone 5S in India in less than 24 hours of its retail launch, while the iPhone 5C model has become the fastest-moving model in stores and is expected to be sold-out during the weekend, the country's top multibrand cellphone retail chains said.
This is the first time a new iPhone model got sold out in India in such a short span of its launch, with fresh stock of iPhone 5S available again from Wednesday. Sales of the lower priced colourful iPhone 5C, however, picked up pace only from Saturday with consumers buying the model since 5S was sold out, mirroring a global trend.
The Cupertino-based giant launched its two new iPhone models in India at 5pm on Friday in a series of events in the top six cities of India and commenced retail sales in select Apple premium resellers and multi-brand stores from 7pm onwards. The Apple iPhone 5S is priced between Rs 53,500 and Rs 71,500, depending on the size of the internal memory, while iPhone 5C is priced at Rs 41,900 (16 GB) and Rs 53,500 (32 GB).
PlanetM Retail said it sold out their iPhone 5S stock by Friday night itself and UniverCell sold out its stock by Saturday noon. Other stores such as the select Apple premium resellers and The MobileStore said their iPhone 5S stock too got exhausted by Saturday late afternoon. "Limited stocks of iPhone 5S came to the stores, with further limited units of the gold colour model which literally got sold out within few minutes of the launch," said D Sathish Babu, founder and CEO of Univer-Cell Telecommunications, the country's second-largest cellphone retail chain with more than 450 stores.
The country's largest cell-phone retail chain, The MobileStore, sold out its iPhone 5S stock in cities like Pune on Friday itself. "We got little more stock than others by virtue of being the largest seller of iPhones in India. The hype is huge, probably due to the shorter gap between the US launch of the device and India," said The MobileStore CEO Himanshu Chakrawarti.
As per retail industry estimates, some 30,000 units of iPhone 5S and 5C models were distributed in India in the launch phase, which includes some 6,000 units of iPhone 5S. Of this, only 200 units of the much sought after gold colour were launched in India. Apple's two iPhone distributors in India — Redington and Ingram Micro — will bring fresh stocks by Tuesday which will hit the stores by Wednesday.
The 70-store chain PlanetM retail CEO Sanjay Karwa said the craze for the new iPhones was the maximum, despite new launches by competitor brands. "Most of the consumers are just asking for iPhone. We are now trying to convert consumers to iPhone 5C which was already half sold out by Saturday afternoon," he said.
The iPhone 5S and 5C has been the best launch ever for Apple, with the company selling a record-breaking nine million units in just three days of its first phase of global launch on September 20. Apple's CEO Tim Cook last week acknowledged in an analyst conference call that the company has a significant supply backlog for its iPhone 5S model due to high demand. "However, our supply is building each week and we're very confident of our ability to keep ramping," he had said.
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