Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Indian iPhone Users Discuss Apple's Poor Services Performance: 'Apple Maps is a Joke'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Not only are the Apple services poor they are non existent in India.
1: No Apple Pay - shame especially when Samsung pay launched 2 years ago
2. No direct hardware service or support - authorised service providers a nightmare
3. No Apple care plus despite phone costs being 40% higher
4. No Apple news
5. No Siri on Apple TV
6. No Apple retail or service
Apple really ignores/overlooks India despite Tim Cooks comments. Considering Google has a special operating system for India and chooses to launch pixel in India first which completely localised support and services it’s no surprise india is 99% Android.
Even Samsung has localised manufacturing and competitive prices. Xiaomi has understood the Indus market well and completely grabbed the market.
If Amazon, Uber, Google and several other global brands are willing to invest in India and are actually putting money where their mouth is I am surprised what stops Apple with its resources.
In the end customers will vote with their wallet and Indian customers patience is not infinite.
With competition fast catching up and surpassing on software and hardware India is a market which Apple has thrown away.
[doublepost=1517333288][/doublepost]
1: No Apple Pay - shame especially when Samsung pay launched 2 years ago
2. No direct hardware service or support - authorised service providers a nightmare
3. No Apple care plus despite phone costs being 40% higher
4. No Apple news
5. No Siri on Apple TV
6. No Apple retail or service
Apple really ignores/overlooks India despite Tim Cooks comments. Considering Google has a special operating system for India and chooses to launch pixel in India first which completely localised support and services it’s no surprise india is 99% Android.
Even Samsung has localised manufacturing and competitive prices. Xiaomi has understood the Indus market well and completely grabbed the market.
If Amazon, Uber, Google and several other global brands are willing to invest in India and are actually putting money where their mouth is I am surprised what stops Apple with its resources.
In the end customers will vote with their wallet and Indian customers patience is not infinite.
With competition fast catching up and surpassing on software and hardware India is a market which Apple has thrown away.
[doublepost=1517333288][/doublepost]
Guess China was third world too but now they are kicking ass. You just sat in your pigeon hole and watched.
Most of that as far as banks are dependent on the banks. Stop trying to blame Apple for things they can’t control
Guess Samsung can get every bank on board then and not Apple. Indian government has been aggressively promoting digital payments. If Apple can’t cut a deal in this environment it never can
Read about Samsung Pay in India.
Surprised that nobody mentioned unavailability of core services like pay & iBooks store. Also, no online store to purchase Apple products hence no refurbished products available here
I think the problem is not just having good local language recognition (like Hindi). People who can afford an iPhone in India will probably use English (or will have no problems using English) anyway. The problem is recognition of the Indian accent.
Both Google and Amazon do an infinitely better job of it. I have a fairly typical Indian accent (though, I would like to believe, not as thick as some sitcoms like to show). But I never have problems giving commands to any of the four Amazon Echo's I own. They never misunderstand me.
And it's not just the quality of the microphone. On my iPhone I've switched to using the Google keyboard. And their voice recognition is so much better. It understands almost everything well enough. But if I were to utter the same phrase to Siri it will almost always trip up (often to hilarious results).
Both Google and Amazon do an infinitely better job of it. I have a fairly typical Indian accent (though, I would like to believe, not as thick as some sitcoms like to show). But I never have problems giving commands to any of the four Amazon Echo's I own. They never misunderstand me.
And it's not just the quality of the microphone. On my iPhone I've switched to using the Google keyboard. And their voice recognition is so much better. It understands almost everything well enough. But if I were to utter the same phrase to Siri it will almost always trip up (often to hilarious results).
It’s the same in a lot of Asian countries. Apple get by because people buy them as ‘jewellery’ rather than for actual functionality. And it does enough most of the time anyway, you can install Google Maps or whatever app you need, it’s just not a default, so it’s kinda messy. The lack of Apple stores, decent Maps, Apple Pay support, TV and Siri gives a severely gimped service compared to others outside of the US and major cities.
Well, they've recently added transit directions for Milwaukee and Omaha, so there's that.
I can empathize with the Indians who think Apple Maps is a joke. We lived through that for several years in the U.S. and after all this time, Apple Maps is still nowhere close to Google Maps and Waze in terms of practical functionality for me. I can only imagine that it won't be long before Apple Maps tells someone in India to turn onto an active taxiway in order to get to the terminal building as it once did if you asked for directions to the airport terminal in Fairbanks, Alaska.
It's not just in India. We pay twice the price or more in Apple Products in Brazil and almost every Apple service here are inferior. We don't have Apple Pay, we don't have turn-by-turn on Maps, there's no Siri for Apple TV, there's no News app, there's no AppleCare for iPhone... it's a huge "there's no" list.
This whole issue seems odd to me, especially Tim mentioning that their big troubles in little India are a result of them spending so much time and effort over the years trying to succeed in China. As if they didn’t have the resources to pursue two fronts at once. The truth is that they are the largest company in the world and absolutely have the resources to multitask in both China and India.
It goes back to an old theory I have about Apple: that they sometimes still think of themselves as a small company. They seem to monotask certain initiatives that could be done in parallel, which results in them losing time on the neglected front and falling behind the competition in that area. I’ve seen this play out over and over and it’s really curious to me.
Sometimes the competition out-thinks or out-hustles you and you have to tip your hat. But from the outside, at least, this “monotasking when they could be multitasking” behavior seems more like an unforced error or an own goal. I’m curious why, culturally, this happens? If it’s deliberate or unintentional? If they consider it a weakness or a strength? I also wonder how Apple would perform if this were to change?
It goes back to an old theory I have about Apple: that they sometimes still think of themselves as a small company. They seem to monotask certain initiatives that could be done in parallel, which results in them losing time on the neglected front and falling behind the competition in that area. I’ve seen this play out over and over and it’s really curious to me.
Sometimes the competition out-thinks or out-hustles you and you have to tip your hat. But from the outside, at least, this “monotasking when they could be multitasking” behavior seems more like an unforced error or an own goal. I’m curious why, culturally, this happens? If it’s deliberate or unintentional? If they consider it a weakness or a strength? I also wonder how Apple would perform if this were to change?
Last edited:
Talk about low-hanging fruit.at least apple doesn't use indian tech support, talk about poor service
I'm from Sri Lanka and I do not have a native accent either. Siri used to perform very poorly in the past. But it got vastly improved over the time and the recent versions work very well for my accent.
Although, Apple Maps is still completely unusable here and Google Maps works perfectly.
Although, Apple Maps is still completely unusable here and Google Maps works perfectly.
It's probably more likely that India is a very notoriously difficult country to do business in for a big Western company. Much more so than in China. There's the protectionism issue which has been covered - Apple's business model is design phone, get a cheap taiwanese company to manufacture it in bulk on the cheap. That doesn't work for India, they have punitive taxes on such imports. But there's also the wildly varying income levels. The bulk of the county lives on a few US$ per day, and there's an ultra rich urban elite like any Western nation - the big difference though is that compared to China, the middle class is still very underdeveloped in India. Thus its actually a very small part of the Indian market that would actually be looking at a device over the $200 mark. Given this (the article notes Apple's presence is about 2.5%) is it surprising they don't lavish resources on maintaining a very complex mapping system in the same way they do for the US?
I hope this doesn't come across as insulting, arrogant or the like, it's really not meant to be. It's just an observation.
Do other voice assistants work? I have heard some languages that may be out of the reach for today's technology to understand.
Both my wife and I literally use Apple Maps every day and it’s good. It has made great strides over the past few years. Certainly, Google Maps continues to innovate cool new features at a more rapid pace. For those with more specialized or heightened needs, Google/Waze are great. But Apple Maps in the U.S. is now a good (to very good) product, to the point that it should satisfy the mapping needs of the majority of average users.
I think Siri is a joke in North America too. I can’t even ask it “How do I get to my next appointment?” “Give me directions to my next appointment”
Even when I say “I love this song” it sometimes tries to search online or says “hmmm I’m not sure what you mean.”
It’s great sometimes but most of the time I don’t even bother using it because it takes substantially longer to accomplish mostly simple queries. Like adjusting the volume through AirPods. I’d much rather just pull my phone out or feel for the button through my pocket. Siri needs major improvement is all I’m trying to say.
Even when I say “I love this song” it sometimes tries to search online or says “hmmm I’m not sure what you mean.”
It’s great sometimes but most of the time I don’t even bother using it because it takes substantially longer to accomplish mostly simple queries. Like adjusting the volume through AirPods. I’d much rather just pull my phone out or feel for the button through my pocket. Siri needs major improvement is all I’m trying to say.
Yes, Apple has a huge problem. Just about to post their biggest earnings in a quarter, ever. They better fix that ASAP!
Agreed for the most part. Although, offline maps has been a huge selling point of Google maps for me. Again, not an average user necessity, but a real advantage for me personally.
Last edited:
Offline maps is great for road trips. I always download the entire trip path before driving. Helps immensely in dead zones.
Much of that makes sense. India’s excessive protectionism seems to be a big issue. I’m not steeped enough in macroeconomics to know if it’s a necessary evil, given their circumstances, or whether it’s self-defeating.
I’m also not qualified to judge whether India truly is a more “notoriously difficult” country to do business in than China. I know they are more chaotic, with dozens of languages, minimal infrastructure and ever/changing government/policies. And China is sort of the opposite these days. But I also know that China’s government is communist & controlling with totalitarian tendencies, and that they are no walk in the park to deal with. I’d think that, to a clever & patient company, India could ultimately be a tremendous and perhaps more rewarding market due to the fact that it’s a bit more like raw clay, and because their government isn’t as ambitious, controlling and occasionally evil.
I will say that I don’t think it’s a good strategy to offer poor services, ever. Even if you only have 2.5% penetration. It messes with the brand, which makes things difficult down the road, especially when your brand is “premium” and you want to price accordingly. As far as Maps or services, I’m reminded of the advice my dad gave me when I started off in the workforce, “dress for the job you want”.