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When purchasing a mobile phone in India, you pay an additional tax. The tax rate used to be 4%, but now it is 12.5% according to Cellular-News, which is an increase of 312.5%. This has pissed a lot of Indians off, so much so that in the state of Maharashtra appropriately 5000 mobile phone shops closed. In Mumbai, sales of mobile phones have been reported to have fallen around 60%. Vipul Sabharwal, Director of Sales at Nokia, which is the market leader in India by a wide margin, said something to the tune of: higher taxes should equal more revenue for the government, but you can’t rape people with fees of they’re simply going to just stop buying handsets. I’ll be watching this very closely. The implications are enormous, especially since a lot of people are trying to compete with Nokia in the low to mid range segment and since India connects over 10 million new people a month.
About The Author
Stefan Constantinescu
Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.
