If you are planning to buy new smartphone especially a flagship or mid-range then you should be very careful with your decision and about the timing of the buy lest you feel cheated. Like Bollywood movies, the newly launched smartphones have now very limited shelve life and after few weeks these products are available at very less prices compared to the launch prices. With the onslaught of new phones every other day, the buyers have now umpteen alternatives available with them.
The way prices are crashing of newly launched smartphones, just imagine the feeling of those buyers who had purhased the products at the time of launch. In this article, we would discuss mainly about three smartphones whose prices have crashed in recent days. These three devices are : LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Nexus 6.
LG G4 was launched in the month of April at whopping price of Rs. 51,000 and surprisingly before the launch, this smartphone was freely available at Rs. 45,000 with many retailers in New Delhi. I had personally visited many retailers to search the best possible price before launch of this product as I was looking for a new flagship phone and I was quoted last price of Rs. 45,500 in the first week of June whereas this phone was officially launched at MRP of Rs. 51,000. Now, LG has officially reduced its price to Rs. 45,000 with leather cover whereas it is available at Rs. 42,890 from Flipkart. If you have the time and energy, you can still get better price than Flipkart from various small retailers in New Delhi.
Samsung Galaxy S6 started selling in India in the month of April at starting price of Rs. 49,900 (32GB variant), and currently it is available on flipkart for approx Rs. 39,000 and in offline stores from Rs. 37,000 onwards depending upon your ability of haggling. To my utter price, Samsung is still selling Galaxy S6 for Rs. 41,900 on its Indian online store.
And finally, see the level of crash of Nexus 6. Google started selling Nexus 6 in India in December last year at Rs. 43,999 for 32GB variant and till yesterday, it was sold merely for Rs. 15,000 by flipkart against exchange scheme. Flipkart anyway would have disposed off your returned phone in proper manner and the effective selling price for them would still have been Rs. 15,000 only. Can somebody have imagined that in a span of 8 months, the price of Nexus 6 would have crashed by almost one third.
We can understand the reduction of price of Nexus 6 because new Nexus phones are round the corner, but unable to understand the reduction of price of LG G4 or Galaxy S6 in two and four months, respectively. There could be two reasons – less than anticipated sales or these products were overpriced at the time of launch.
To corroborate the above facts, I would like to share true expeience with my readers. I was in the market to buy a good premium phone for my personal use. I searched e-commerce sites and visited few retailers in South and West Delhi. Surprisingly, I was quoted very good prices which were not available on e-commerce sites and when I asked for more reduction in prices then all the retailers advised me in one voice that I should wait for one more month if I wanted to have the desired price. I heeded to their advice and got the phone of my choice for less than anticipated price.
So, if you want to buy the smartphone, my advice would be not to buy it at the spur of the moment and wait for sometime till the prices stabilsie to some extent. However, exceptions are always there. Apple and HTC are two brands which do not reduce their prices easily as far as Indian market is concerned. All other products whether of Indian brands or Chinese or any other brands, get frequent price cuts in India.
If you are in the market for any brand, keep a tab on their prices by searching the prices on different e-commerce portals and from different offline channels, if available there and you will definitely not blame yourself for paying high price. It is always advisable to see the movie after few weeks when crowd is less and get the best deal also in Bollywood terminology.
