Apple Inc. Cuts Price Of iPhone 6S And 6S Plus Smartphones 15% In India As Sales Lag

The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are getting a price cut in India just two months after their launch. Apple has dropped the prices of its latest smartphones by an average of 15 percent to boost lagging sales in the country, according to the Times of India.

India is the most expensive place to buy an iPhone in the world, due in part to import duties and taxes. The lowest-end iPhone costs as much as a third of the average annual salary in India.

After the price cut, the 16GB iPhone 6S is being sold at retailers for between 52,000 and 55,000 rupees ($785-$830), down from a launch price of 62,000 rupees ($936). The price cut also applies to the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB models of both the 6S and the 5.5-inch 6S Plus. The cuts come shortly after Apple slashed the prices of its iPhone 5S by half in India.

It’s the latest move from Apple as the global smartphone market is expected to slow to a low of 9.8 percent growth in 2015, down from 27.6 percent last year, according to IDC. One of the biggest contributing factors to that is the Chinese smartphone market, which is anticipated to post a growth of only 1.2 percent. With that in mind, Apple is looking to tap into developing smartphone markets such as India and the Middle East for future growth. But Apple hasn’t entirely given up on China. On Friday, it announced its plans to roll out the Apple Pay mobile payment system in partnership with China’s UnionPay and 15 unnamed banks.

The price cuts come at a critical time for Apple – the all-important holiday quarter; analysts are looking to see if it can beat its all-time record of 74.5 million units sold during the same period last year. Consensus estimates previously forecast iPhone sales at 78 million units for the quarter. However, for all of 2016, Apple could see its iPhone sales decline for the first time by about 6 percent, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty forecast in a research note released Dec. 14, according to Business Insider.