AAPL: Payment Plans Helping iPhone in India, Opines Raymond James - Barron's (blog)

By Tiernan Ray Raymond James's Tavis McCourt this afternoon offers some data points on Apple's (AAPL) sales in India, citing and article today by The Economic Times's Akanksha Prasad and Indu Nandakumar, which in turn cites data from market research firm IDC, showing that sales of the iPhone rose 300% to 400% in the last three months. With Apple having had very limited success in India thus far, McCourt opines the company may be seeing some results from pursuing novel payment plans for the iPhone in that country: Apple is ramping up its focus on the Indian market where smartphone penetration remains very low at less than 10% vs. more than 50% in developed countries. Apple is teaming up with local distributors and resellers to finance advertising and marketing campaigns while also introducing payment plans designed to make its expensive iPhone appeal to a broader swath of Indian consumers. Effectively, Apple is supporting partners to create payment plans for the iPhone, similar to what it has done recently in China. The success of this approach is still to be determined, but it's classic Apple to find a new and different way to attract new customers without lowering price. McCourt maintains an Outperform rating on Apple shares and a $600 price target. Apple shares today rose $6.76, or 1.4%, to close at $474.98. via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNF9-spD3pb9IT144td9xBdEQzxyOA&url=http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/02/08/aapl-payment-plans-helping-iphone-in-india-opines-raymond-james/?mod=BOLBlog

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