It seems that Samsung has hit back at Apple’s increasingly dominant stance in India by launching its own full-blown EMI scheme. This marks the arrival at our doorstep of the smartphone war that has been raging for quite some time now. The program apparently covers the South Korean company’s high-end devices, positioning them in a more attractive manner and making them more accessible.
The new Samsung EMI scheme is to run for over a month and the company plans to further expand it to encompass digital media as well as in-store advertising. And let’s not just talk of the scheme itself, but also of which phones are included in said promotion. The new campaign covers the Galaxy Note 2, matching it almost identically with the way the iPhone 5 has been positioned.
According to The Times of India, the latest phone from the stables of the Cupertino-based company can be purchased in the country with a down payment of Rs. 16,990 and 12 monthly installments amounting to Rs. 2,376 each, while the Note 2 is being sold at Rs. 2,999 per month on continued payment for a year. The installment option was tinkered with back in September last year, with the GS3 being at the receiving end of such experimentation.
Also available under this periodic payment system are the Galaxy Grand, the GS3 and even the recently released Galaxy Camera. It must be noted that Samsung’s retail reach in the country is much broader than is Apple’s, and this move it seems, should stretch the Korean company’s lead over an entity that has been its chief tormentor of late.
Apparently, monthly sales of the iPhone doubled after an EMI scheme in January brought Apple’s handset to customers in the country at a series of regular payments. This was also bolstered by an advertising campaign and we were seeing an increasing number of these adverts pop up in all sorts of places. But of course, reps from the South Korean multinational conglomerate played down the comparison of their campaign to that of rival Apple.
The Samsung EMI scheme has been launched in full swing, and it makes sense for the company to apply it to higher models in a country obsessed with price comparisons and fuel consumption. We have yet to see whether it will be applied to mid-range devices as well.