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Why buying an Iphone in Pakistan is the biggest mistake

Buying an iPhone in Pakistan, are you kidding me?

This will always be a subjective question depending on the spare money you have. But as a sane Pakistani whose only ambition is not only owning a nice phone that decision will seldom be in the favor of purchasing an iPhone. Here are the reasons why

No official Support

The biggest reason is the lack of support available in Pakistan. No official Apple presence in Pakistan means you will be on the mercy of a road side technician to open up your beautiful shiny phone and pray that he doesn't have another phone for repair with some parts missing. Lack of Apple support also means you cant claim warranties. Which for a 600$ phone is the equivalent of climbing k2 with no ropes. So ultimately you are paying for a used or stolen phone which has no warranty and if the real owner one day decides to lock it, all you can do it is just google how to unlock iphone. Just to give you an idea there are more than 500 google searches a month from Pakistan for "unlock iphone".

Not as stable as you think

iPhones are like that student in class who wears nice and clean clothes and is always helping out the teacher, even if he doesn't do well in exam some how that wont matter. iPhones crash on regular basis but even when they are not working they are pretty to look at, so its not that bad?(it is). In June, 2015 there were 12,000 google searches for 'iphone blue screen'. This is just one indicator about operating system issues. Hardware failures are apart from this. 

Lack of quality lease bundle deals

At the time of writing Verizon is offering a lease of 24 months with no down payment which costs 27$/month approximately equal to 3000 Rs. This deal makes sense as you will be paying the amount in 2 years. If you compare it to the deals available in Pakistan there is a terrible contrast and a good deal is impossible to find. Paying 70,000 Rs in one go is not a thrifty decision by any means.

Android is a good alternate if not better

It took quite some time for android to catch up the head start iPhone had but in my humble opinion it already has and with vendors like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola rooting for android it wont be surprising if Android outshines iPhone. The vendor's flagship phones can compete with iPhone head on and you still get the flexibility of choosing the right one depending on the budget, size and various factors. Android market place is as good as iPhone's, in fact there are more free applications in Android market place. Google owns five of the 10 most popular mobile apps in the U.S. and Facebook has three of them — including Facebook, which is by far the most popular. Apple has just two, Nielsen says.




Apple doesn't give a damn about you and so should you

If Apple don't consider Pakistan a worthy market, we should have some self respect and don't go bonkers over some shiny phones which are made in china. 



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