A queue of eager-beaver customers, exuberantly clapping sales agents overdoing it like schoolkids at a motivational discourse, thronging bloggers and TV cameras, and of course, the hype online. When Apple’s iPhone Duo, perhaps you can call it the first ‘different’ product from the marquee company in some years, hit stores in India on Friday, these were the familiar scenes one is used to at every one of its earlier phone launches, now extending into what is possibly its most expensive new model.
That’s not all. There will be limited numbers available in stores for walk-ins globally, warned the company, with Indian stores reportedly only allowing in those who had ordered in advance.
The focus at Apple’s stores in Saket (Delhi) and Bandra-Kurla Complex (Mumbai) was on clearing all the pre-bookings, with the entire first week’s stock already being covered, and bookings extending into the new year. Not bad for a phone whose price starts at about 3 lakh and goes up to 4.5 lakh.
Even better for a company that is, by all accounts, rather lagging behind the zeitgeist of the era, artificial intelligence (AI). But the surprising bit is that even without that (ubiquitous, when it comes to rivals) feather on its cap, Apple is doing very nicely, thank you; its market capitalisation record may have been surpassed by AI posterboys Nvidia and Microsoft, but Apple is sitting pretty without it at above 5 trillion dollars, that is way more than the total GDP of India!
The stock has gone up 28 per cent this year alone, mighty surprising considering how the company has fared on the AI front; despite Apple Intelligence being out there and the original Siri (virtual assistant on Apple iPhones) being there from way back, its foray into the new frontier has been less than cutting-edge. Apple Intelligence and Siri with AI were not just delayed, but have been the brunt of customer complaints. Its focus on privacy, security features and in-device (instead of cloud) has limited its AI progress.
It only adds to a string of failures the company has faced when it comes to cutting-edge tech, be it the autonomous car project, which was shelved in 2024 or the Vision Pro, which did not find many takers or the Butterfly keyboard disaster after 2015, which even faced lawsuits; not all of the company’s ventures have been successful. But then again, you couldn’t tell, seeing how its stocks have been performing, and how its new lineup sees demand shoot up all over the world the moment they are announced.
So how does it do it?
By playing on its legacy and perfecting the art of marketing desirability backed by solid durability and ease of use. This could be a classic case of success building up not on excess, but legacy success, with reliability and cool-quotient walking hand in hand.
How long will it manage to do so?
Under new chief Ternus, the company seems extra-Teflon-coated for even more stupendous returns to its shareholders – consider the strategy of releasing the Pro versions of the latest iPhone, titled iPhone 18 initially, with the plain vanilla model not set for release until next year, as well as the much-heralded iPhone Duo, which gives further momentum to those cliched jokes about selling one’s kidney to buy an Apple phone, it seems this company does not just have the playbook to profitability down pat, hell, it seems to be writing one on its own.
