For first time, new iPhones get weak response in India

Apple’s new iPhone XS and XS Max saw lower sales in the Indian market with several large retailers across the country saying they are for the first time left with little less than half the stock supplied to them after the first weekend sales.

This is in stark contrast to earlier years when demand would be much higher than supplies with Indian shoppers queuing up outside stores to grab the new iPhone. Apple had imported about a lakh units of the new iPhones, expanded availability to more stores and more markets to ensure high sales momentum at launch.

ET spoke to four large multibrand retail chains and three Apple Premium Resellers (APR) chains across the country with more than 1,500 stores among them. Senior executives in these chains said 40-45% of the stock was unsold as of Sunday night


While demand was better than last year’s iPhone 8, which too had muted response in India, sales of iPhone XS and XS Max were about 55-60% compared to last year’s iPhone X in the first three days of the launch.

More than half the demand has been for the pricier iPhone XS Max 256 GB model in gold colour priced Rs 1,24,900, they said. Apple launched iPhone XS and XS Max last Friday priced at Rs 99,900 to Rs 1,44,900 against last year’s iPhone X launch price of Rs 89,000 to Rs 1.02 lakh.

Brian Bade, CEO at India’s largest consumer electronics retail chain Reliance Digital, said the retailer is still left with stock of the new iPhones. He, however, said some pre-booked customers are yet to collect the models probably postponing it to ride past the inauspicious period of Shradh.

“While sale of the new iPhones in the first weekend was certainly more than iPhone 8 of last year, it is still less than iPhone X. It’s a super-premium smartphone and will take some time to sell in India,” Bade said. He expects sales to pick up when Navratri starts in the second week of October.

Subhas Chandra, MD at Bengaluru-based Sangeetha Mobiles which operates 540 stores, said there has been no growth in same-store sales over last year for the new iPhones and there is still stock left. “However, in absolute terms, we sold more number of units of the new iPhones as compared to last year due to higher stock availability and since we also expanded the number of stores by adding 175 outlets,” he said.

Analysts said October-December shipment of iPhones in India can grow this year based on the older models unlike earlier years when the new launches would drive it.

Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research associate director Tarun Pathak said that demand for the new iPhones might be spread across the quarter in the middle of the festive season compared to Apple’s previous launches.

“Having said that, Apple might still find it challenging to sell new iPhones beyond hard core Apple affluent users,” he said. Apple India did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

Aadhaar verdict fallout: Firms, govt brace up for requests to delink data

Private enterprises, as well as various government departments, may be staring at a situation of confusion post the Supreme Court’s verdict on Aadhaar, which has allowed people to request for deletion of their Aadhaar data from the database of companies.

According to experts, companies and government agencies that were heavily relying on Aadhaar for customer verification, may be flooded with requests for deletion in the coming weeks.

“Since the judgement came on Wednesday, there has been a spike in the number of people who have signed the petition to optout of Aadhaar and a form which has been published to delink Aadhaar from existing database has seen a spate of downloads from its website,” said Raghu Godavar, member of the group Rethink Aadhaar.
While companies have been waiting for directions from Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or their respective ministries, the former has said that sectoral regulators have to provide clarity in this regard.

Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI told ET that as far as UIDAI is concerned, the authentication log has to be deleted after six months and the authority will delete it.

“This is the part that concerns us. The part that concerns other agencies and regulators has to be looked at by them. And they need to do what is required as per the order,” he said. Some customers have already expressed questions on social media over the process to delete their Aadhaar information.

“We should be allowed to de-link if it is associated with bank account. (There should be) assurance by third parties that historical data has been purged,” said Nitin Bhatnagar, assistant vice president at SISA, a payment security specialist firm.

Ramanjit Singh Chima, policy director at Access Now, said companies will have to figure a mechanism to facilitate such requests by people demanding the deletion of their data.

“Companies need to proactively reach out to their customers and seek alternative KYC and government agencies like the department of telecom or regulators such as TRAI need to give guidance on this,” he said.

Chima added the ministries need to start taking proactive steps and informing consumers.

For people who don’t have any proof of identity apart from Aadhaar—an estimated 400 million—companies will have to either accept paper-based Aadhaar in lieu of e-KYC on a voluntary basis.

Apart from banks and telecom companies, a host of government and private services, too, have linked to Aadhaar.

Of the Employee Provident Fund Organization’s 60 million members, as many as 50 million have already seeded their Aadhaar with their PF accounts. More than 13.6 million residents have used Aadhaar for passport services. The Election Commission has also linked the Aadhaar numbers of nearly 38 crore voters.

Privacy experts say consumers can write to companies to delink their Aadhaar details, though banks and telecom firms may not be able to immediately oblige stating that they have not received a notification from the government.

“The judgement makes it clear the linking isn’t permitted. But the modalities to that are yet to be announced,” said Rishab Bailey, legal consultant and privacy policy researcher.

Technologists say it wouldn’t take long for companies to comply with requests for data deletion if they choose to do so.

“Depending on which application they have stored their data in, they have to scan those applications and databases. They can either include the option of retrieval and deletion of data to the old application, or write a separate application that scans through the entire database of the banking or telecom application and make sure they delete that,” said a financial services technology adviser with a Bengaluru-based IT services firm.

Data deletion will not be a “massive technological overhead” for companies, this person said.

Zomato, TripAdvisor and other third-party apps say Facebook data breach didn’t affect them

Zomato, TripAdvisor and dating app Truly Madly said their Indian users have not been impacted by the Facebook data breach that led to about 50 million accounts getting exposed to hackers globally.

Experts had said the hacking, which was revealed by the social networking platform on Friday, would have exposed third-party apps of users that accept Facebook logins.

“Facebook has been in touch with us and as far as we understand, there is no impact to Zomato users and their usage of Zomato as a result of this breach at Facebook,” a Zomato spokesperson said. The online food delivery and restaurant discovery company has about 120,000 users across Zomato Treats and about 160,000 across Zomato Gold.

Facebook had about 270 million users in India at the end of July, according to the Statista website. Some companies allow users to access their apps through Facebook logins.


A TripAdvisor spokesperson told ET that at this time, there is no evidence that any of its user information has been affected or compromised. Hotstar and BookMyShow didn’t respond to emails seeking comment till the time of going to press.

Rahul Kumar, cofounder of dating app Truly Madly, which requires a Facebook login, said his users were not impacted by the data breach. Aditya Gupta, cofounder of iGenero, said dating apps that are solely dependent on Facebook logins for access could be the most affected by the hack.

“People use Facebook logins to avoid creating other new accounts on apps and they think it’s convenient. Going forward, this will be a big issue for third-party apps and they might be figuring how to reduce dependency on the platform,” Gupta said.

Globally, dating app Tinder has asked Facebook to share more information on the breach.

Facebook said on Friday that hackers had exploited a bug in a feature that lets users see their Facebook page as others would. The hackers were able to take over the accounts and use them as if they were the account holders. That included posting or viewing information shared by friends on those accounts. Facebook said no credit card information stored with the company was accessed.

More than 90 million users were forcibly logged out of their accounts by Facebook and had to log back in on Friday for security reasons.

Alibaba planning to bring its China retail playbook to India

As Alibaba looks to expand its cloud business in India, having launched its second data centre in the country last week, it is looking to work with players in the retail space to bring its popular ‘new retail’ concept to India.

The company is even looking at bringing technology it is using in China such as augmented reality (AR) used in shopping events such as Single’s Day to the Indian retail industry to enhance the customer experience.

Alibaba Cloud has so far announced only its partnership with DLF shopping malls, but is said to be in talks with other major retail players as well.

“Retail has been a big focus for us in India,” said Vivek Gupta, head of business development for India and Saarc at Alibaba Cloud.

“We are talking to almost every single retail brand in the country. We want to partner with them in their omni-channel journey, as well as strengthen supply chain, offer intelligence on business operations, and enhance customer experience,” Gupta said.

Alibaba’s ‘new retail’ concept, coined by founder Jack Ma, includes a personalised experience for a customer in a physical store, customer analytics for offline stores to offer matching products, and integrating online experience at offline stores through customisation and deliveries.

“We think these products will meet the needs of the retail industry in the region who are looking to digitise their operations,” Gupta said.

According to one person aware of developments, augmented reality (AR) is also something Alibaba is looking to bring to the retail space in India. Alibaba had launched Taobao Buy as an AR experience application for shoppers two years ago.

“AR is used extensively during 11/11 shopping festivals,” Gupta said, referring to the popular Single’s Day celebrations in China.

“In China, Alibaba owns malls, stores as well as online platforms, and we can bring our experience here,” he said.

Other bets
Gupta said he could not comment on “futuristic” plans on AR. He also did not comment on Alibaba Cloud’s partnership with Paytm Mall, the e-commerce arm of Paytm, which is also focusing on omni-channel. Alibaba is an investor in Paytm Mall and parent company One 97 Communications.

Paytm Mall did not respond to queries. Alibaba Cloud had recently partnered with Paytm to launch the Paytm AI cloud, the Indian company’s foray into the cloud business “Paytm is a key partner in India. We will be the technology enabler in terms of enabling the Paytm AI Cloud,” Gupta said.

Apart from retail, Alibaba Cloud is also focusing on other verticals in the country for adoption. “Internet-enabled business around e-commerce, gaming are big business for us. We have seen strong adoption in media and entertainment, as well as in the manufacturing industry,” Gupta said.

Apollo Data Breach Leads To More Than 200 Million Contact Records Stolen

Data breaches, hacking attempts, data stealing, all these terms have now become something of a routine for the corporate sector. Once again, a massive hack allowed the attackers to pilfer over 200 million records. This time, the victim is a sales engagement company Apollo. The reports about the Apollo data breach surfaced online after the firm began notifying the customers.

Apollo Data Breach Exposed 200 Million Contact Database To Hackers

As disclosed by TechCrunch, the startup sales revenue and engagement service Apollo suffered a massive hack stealing millions of data records. Precisely, the company lost around 200 million records from its contact database in the Apollo data breach.

Reportedly, Bjoern Zinssmeister of Templarbit found an email generated by Apollo to its customers informing them of a breach. Zinssmeister shared the email with TechCrunch who then shared the contents of the email with the public.

According to the email, Apollo noticed the breach “weeks after system upgrades in July”. Explaining the details of the hacked data, the email read,

While the hackers have stolen contact information from Apollo’s database, the firm confirmed that financial details, Social Security numbers or other sensitive data remained unaffected as the firm does not store these details.

Investigations Underway
Right after noticing the breach, Apollo began investigating the matter. While the investigations are still in progress, Tim Zheng, CEO Apollo, said in his email that the firm informed the customers regarding the incident to comply with their transparency values. However he refused to give more details, as stated in his email,

Although the Apollo data breach merely exposed the “publicly gathered” information to the hackers, and so, some people may think of it as potentially less harmful. However, it certainly succeeds in getting listed among the top hacking attempts and data breaches happened this year such as the Chegg data breach, and the breach at the fashion retailer SheIn that affected millions of customers.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.