Apple introduces over-ear AirPods Max for Rs 59,900

[red dragon]

Then how does Samsung sell something like Note 20 Ultra or whatever at a lower price compared to US? Are they actually manufacturing these super high end devices in India?
Sennheiser also has the same issue, they don't charge 38 percent over price in say Germany or Ireland ( almost all hd25s are made in Ireland) Even if the product is made in China, the import tax plus GST should be 38 percent.
How Sony or Sennheiser are selling 1000XM4/ PXC550 at a lower price?
These 2 are made in China for sure ( definitely not in India)
Pursuing a healthy hobby is getting really difficult in India...it wasn't this difficult 10 years back, yes, the clearance from customs was a gamble, but I could manage to import few things without much issues from US. Seems very expensive now. Was going through headphonezone..they do have some nice products but the pricings are ridiculous for most. A Topping NX4 ( launched in 2017) is selling for 15K!! Even an absolute low end portable amp ( NX1S) costs around 5K!!
Even the Fiio India website is crazy..M11 costs 37k....why are we even bashing Apple only? F9 pro costs 10K!! You can literally buy 2 IE40 pro for that..crazy!!!

 

[rdst_1]

Then how does Samsung sell something like Note 20 Ultra or whatever at a lower price compared to US? Are they actually manufacturing these super high end devices in India?
Sennheiser also has the same issue, they don't charge 38 percent over price in say Germany or Ireland ( almost all hd25s are made in Ireland) Even if the product is made in China, the import tax plus GST should be 38 percent.
How Sony or Sennheiser are selling 1000XM4/ PXC550 at a lower price?
These 2 are made in China for sure ( definitely not in India)

In a capitalist market, a company charges what it deems that consumers will be willing to pay. Apple clearly knows that since anyone who is in their ecosystem has no choice apart from buying an Apple product (not talking about these headphones but about other devices in general where there is no choice apart from Apple), they charge a premium for it.
You also have to understand that unlike Europe or US where Apple is a normal brand, in India, Apple is a premium/luxury brand. So they can get away with pricing their products a little more expensively compared to other countries, because anyone who is already splurging say 60k on a phone will also be willing to splurge 65-70k for the phone.
OTOH, I see that the prices for their products which have somewhat lesser demand are more in-line with their US prices.

 

[red dragon]

^^ THIS!! Very true...Apple is just another brand in Europe with marginally overpriced products.
In my country a top end Samsung Note costs more than iphone. Even Dell charges us more for XPS 13 than a M1 Air.
And honestly for my usage, the new Air is a much better laptop ( both lack ports I need) and at least with Apple I'm getting some top notch free/ much cheaper software.
Only for a DAW I am saving close to 500 EUR!! Once the Gram dies, I will go back to Apple ( overall cost is significantly lower for my usage)
I'm too old to use pirated software..gone all legit years ago. Young people often forget price of software.

 

[alekhkhanna]

Then how does Samsung sell something like Note 20 Ultra or whatever at a lower price compared to US? Are they actually manufacturing these super high end devices in India?

Samsung manufacturers all their handsets and other stuff at their factory in Noida (one of the largest on earth).

Regarding Apple, if you look at the iPhone prices, you'll see something similar. The mini and 12 are priced similar to US prices if adjusted for import taxes etc but Pro and Max variants command a super premium, possibly because they know these are premium products, will sell less, and thus want to maximise profit.
I think same goes for Max Pro. Even if it was priced at 40-45k, it will be a super premium product for the masses, and won't sell volumes. They're not losing anything by charging 60k for it.

 

[sbhas2k]

Samsung manufacturers all their handsets and other stuff at their factory in Noida (one of the largest on earth).

Regarding Apple, if you look at the iPhone prices, you'll see something similar. The mini and 12 are priced similar to US prices if adjusted for import taxes etc but Pro and Max variants command a super premium, possibly because they know these are premium products, will sell less, and thus want to maximise profit.
I think same goes for Max Pro. Even if it was priced at 40-45k, it will be a super premium product for the masses, and won't sell volumes. They're not losing anything by charging 60k for it.

Pro max have lidar sensor which is again some additional tax they need to pay the government.. that may be the reason.

 

[red dragon]

Makes very good business sense..

 

[y2s]

Pure hypothetical and fabricated comparisons and assumptions. Totally baseless.

This is going to me my canned response to a msankadi for all his posts going forward. I'm glad other members are noticing the ideocracy. The guy actually called me an idiot for using an NUC in the M1 thread, however ended up buying one himself that same week. There is absolutely no thought or merit to his posts which border on trolling.

Be civil before warnings are issued if this continues.

I am absolutely fed up of all the hate that is posted by him and this makes my experience on the forum 100x worse. I come here to have a civil discussion and learn. Not to prove someone wrong. I had not even opened this thread because I knew he would be instigating everyone. If you look at his post history, That's all it is . Apple hate and no meaningful discussion. But suddenly when other members reply to him in his language there is talk of warnings? WHY?

P.S. - @msankadi I will psychoanalyze why you hate Apple based on our discussions on the forum.
Your wife likes Apple, and you can't afford to buy her Apple shit. So you overcompensate.

 

[pauldmps]

It seems the mod's warning here had no effect. Tagging @puns .

Then how does Samsung sell something like Note 20 Ultra or whatever at a lower price compared to US? Are they actually manufacturing these super high end devices in India?
Sennheiser also has the same issue, they don't charge 38 percent over price in say Germany or Ireland ( almost all hd25s are made in Ireland) Even if the product is made in China, the import tax plus GST should be 38 percent.
How Sony or Sennheiser are selling 1000XM4/ PXC550 at a lower price?
These 2 are made in China for sure ( definitely not in India)
Pursuing a healthy hobby is getting really difficult in India...it wasn't this difficult 10 years back, yes, the clearance from customs was a gamble, but I could manage to import few things without much issues from US. Seems very expensive now. Was going through headphonezone..they do have some nice products but the pricings are ridiculous for most. A Topping NX4 ( launched in 2017) is selling for 15K!! Even an absolute low end portable amp ( NX1S) costs around 5K!!
Even the Fiio India website is crazy..M11 costs 37k....why are we even bashing Apple only? F9 pro costs 10K!! You can literally buy 2 IE40 pro for that..crazy!!!

Samsung is another company which takes a cut in its profits for market share in India. Apple doesn't need to and doesn't care.

And its not just Smartphones or audio equipment, building a PC is damn expensive in India. Forget the RTX 3XXX cards prices when converted from USD, just look at what prices AMD CPUs are getting sold at.

 

[msankadi]

It seems the mod's warning here had no effect. Tagging @puns .

Samsung is another company which takes a cut in its profits for market share in India. Apple doesn't need to and doesn't care.

And its not just Smartphones or audio equipment, building a PC is damn expensive in India. Forget the RTX 3XXX cards prices when converted from USD, just look at what prices AMD CPUs are getting sold at.

In addition, Samsung sells its Exynos processors in India which is just garbage compared to the Snapdragon, so I guess Samsung is just dumping its inferior products in India barring a few non-Exynos versions. Google is even worse (apart from the new Pixel phones) not even bothering to launch many products in India.
In phones, LG and Asus phones are quite well priced in addition to the Chinese ones. Asus ROG phones are quite good but the LG ones are not good anymore.

 

[alekhkhanna]

Pro max have lidar sensor which is again some additional tax they need to pay the government.. that may be the reason.

But a 40-45% hike ? That's insanity, and something only Apple or niche category manufacturers can get away with. Apple isn't niche, but the brand value is so high, specially in India, that they can set whatever price they want, and people will pay.
You can, quite literally, get a flight to Dubai or Singapore, buy an iPhone 12 Pro/Max, come back, and still save money.
----------------

Eventually capitalism rules the roost. As long as enough people put the same value on your product as you, and are willing to pay, what's the harm ?
Look at the Pixel series. Launched at 70k-ish price. Failed. The 4a launched at 30k-ish price, and they can't supply enough units.
It's all about matching the supply, demand and value.
IMO, Apple has perfected this art. And more power to them. They are a for profit company, not a charity.

 

[red dragon]

Yes, Exynos SOCs are really bad..I'm no expert, but bought a Note 10 lite ( ignoring suggestions of knowledgeable forum members like you guys) while I love the s-pen functionalities ( and planning to buy the Note 20) the device lags a lot and the battery has degraded rather quickly.
The Xiaomi phone ( K something) with SD ?845 is blazing fast with much better battery life.
I will never buy another Exynos phone ( A 50 or something was another shitty slow phone which became unusable within a year!!)
I practically knew nothing about recent Android phones ( 5T was my first android phone after many years and it was a very good phone)

 

[t3chg33k]

Yes, Exynos SOCs are really bad..I'm no expert, but bought a Note 10 lite ( ignoring suggestions of knowledgeable forum members like you guys) while I love the s-pen functionalities ( and planning to buy the Note 20) the device lags a lot and the battery has degraded rather quickly.
The Xiaomi phone ( K something) with SD ?845 is blazing fast with much better battery life.
I will never buy another Exynos phone ( A 50 or something was another shitty slow phone which became unusable within a year!!)
I practically knew nothing about recent Android phones ( 5T was my first android phone after many years and it was a very good phone)

Exynos has a bad rep but the newer ones are going to use Cortex-X1 cores clocked higher than the ones in SD888. Mali GPU is still quite some way behind Adreno but then the Exynos with the AMD GPU should turn up in the 2022 flagships. Qualcomm's monopoly is not great, especially as they arm-twist OEMs that are compelled to use their modems. Hopefully, Exynos will become the preferable option in the near future and Samsung will focus better on optimising the OS, at least for flagship devices. Unfortunately, Android manufacturers don't care about it at all due to the short shelf life of the phone and the primary obsession with benchmarks that dies down after a few months.

Rather than Exynos itself being extremely crappy in the A-series devices, I feel Samsung makes it worse by releasing poorly optimised updates in the future versions of Android that make the device completely unusable.

The Exynos 2100 is now alleged to have a top speed beating that of the Snapdragon 875

The latest potential Samsung Galaxy S21 Geekbench 5 scores are out there, and they show the Snapdragon 875 variant may be ahead of what might be this phone's Exynos 2100-powered counterpart. However, according to a famous leaker, this is not the whole story.

www.notebookcheck.net

Samsung developing two new high-end Exynos chipsets, one features AMD GPU

It is rumored that Samsung will soon introduce the Exynos 2100 chipset and that it won't be plagued by performance ...

www.sammobile.com

 

[Muathaz]

this is sad

 

[pauldmps]

Dave Lee's review is out:

 

[rdst_1]

Dave Lee's review is out:

He clearly says what everyone is saying - That these are very well built (but heavy due to that) , still somewhat fragile, have good sound quality but insanely priced for that (shows XM4 and others available for half the price) and in the end says that these are already sold out till March, which just shows how strong of a customer base Apple has. So, everything we were saying in this thread.

 

[rkkaranrk]

He clearly says what everyone is saying - That these are very well built (but heavy due to that) , still somewhat fragile, have good sound quality but insanely priced for that (shows XM4 and others available for half the price) and in the end says that these are already sold out till March, which just shows how strong of a customer base Apple has. So, everything we were saying in this thread.

So now the thread will have a new turn.... Dave and others are being paid to say so. Ye gormint bik chuki hai judge sahab. [emoji1787] [emoji1787]

 

[sbhas2k]

A few more reviews. Whatever I could understand from these.. noise canceling same as xm4, sounds much better than xm4, better sound stage, spatial audio is amazing, and not really for an extreme audiophiles

Overall a great headphone [emoji106][emoji108]

 

[msankadi]

So to summarize :

1. Not worth 3 times the price of xm4. Heck reviews saying not even worth 2x the price.

2. Sold out doesn't mean it's high demand till we know how many units were sold, it might just be a supply issue. Example : Mi flash sales, always out of stock, dependent on limited supply. Vu tv stock issues. Many others.

 

[Muathaz]

I tried the XM3 and Bose 700 from a store after i bought my airpods pro. to my pleasant surprise, the airpods sounded better than both of these bigger cans. both of them sounded very thin and cheap like while airpods sounded more full bodied without a hint of sibilance (slightly EQed to pull up the lower frequencies). noise cancellation was obviously better on those two, but airpods does it amazingly well considering the size difference.

I didn’t tell this here before because i know i’ll get called a fanboy and all other reviews suggest otherwise.

im pretty sure the max sound much better and maybe more comfortable ? than both sony and bose. but to evaluate if it’s worth paying the extra it boils down to one’s affordability. if i could easily afford a 550$ headphone, i’d probably go for it

 

[alekhkhanna]

So to summarize :

1. Not worth 3 times the price of xm4. Heck reviews saying not even worth 2x the price.

2. Sold out doesn't mean it's high demand till we know how many units were sold, it might just be a supply issue. Example : Mi flash sales, always out of stock, dependent on limited supply. Vu tv stock issues. Many others.

XM4 is pretty crap headphones for audio. Good for ANC, but if you like non colored music, they aren't great.
Look at Seinns PX550 II instead.

I'll be highly highly doubtful is Apple makes anything in short numbers tbh. They have a great fan base, both fanboys and people who legit love and use their products, so it's not surprising these are OOS.