Apple has really geared up it’s take on Brazil. First it upped the efforts on iTunes Store in Brazil, then it included it among the regions first to have iTunes Match and now Apple has decided to launch ‘the best smartphone ever’ in Brazil. What’s astonishing, however, are the price-tag the iPhone devices are sold at in Brazil. Not only the devices are to be sold at more than the double of their US prices, the Siri feature is useless for Brazilians since it doesn’t understand Brazilian Portuguese.
Apple has finally brought the iPhone 4S to Brazil but with unusually high price-tags. Whether this is a result of import taxes applied on these phones or some other factor is involved is not clear. The same iPhone 4S which a US user could have bought for a little over $800 is available to a Brazilian user for a price of around $1800!! And the same is the case with all the devices in Apple’s iPhone series.
Siri doesn’t support Brazilian Portuguese:
The demand for Apple devices has been very high in Brazil and the users have been vying to get their hands on iPhone series. However, another setback with iPhone devices for Brazilian users is that they can not avail the amazing personal assistant, Siri, which is kind of the best thing about iPhone 4S. The reasons is because Siri doesn’t yet support Brazilian Portuguese. According to Apple, the support for the language will be here in 2012 but the Brazilian users will have to make do with a Siri-less experience until then.
In other regions, such as Chile, the prices are somewhat reasonable when bundled with carrier packages. Tech experts have also speculated that a wise decision for Brazilian users would be to postpone the purchase of iPhone 4S another few months. This, because Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn is said to start producing locally-manufactured iPhone soon. And once these devices hit the shelves, they will certainly have much lower price-tags than the Apple is currently offering in Brazil.
The response to the debut of iPhone 4S in Brazil has been rather cold. One wonders if it’s the winter or the price-tags that has done the trick!
Image courtesy Yuktaka Tsutano.
[ttjad keyword=”iphone”]
