The Cupertino-based tech giant Apple has hiked the prices of four new Apple audio products in India today without any major announcement. The products that have witnessed a price hike include three popular AirPods as well as the most premium headphones from the company – the AirPods Max. While the AirPods Max has seen a massive price hike of Rs 7,000, the 3rd gen AirPods from Apple now costs Rs 2,000 more and the third-gen AirPods Pro costs Rs 1,400 more.
The Reason Behind Price Hike
Even though the particular reason for the rice hike hasn’t been revealed by the company, it is very likely that it could be because of the hike in import duties of headphones and earphones. This hike was announced just a few weeks ago at the Union Budget. Going by the new budget for this financial year (2022-23), customs duties on headphones are earphones have been increased to 20% from 15%. This could be a possible reason for the price hike of the above-mentioned audio products in India.
New Pricing
The price hike in Apple audio products was first spotted by the tipster Abhishek Yadav and apparently, the changes are being reflected only on the Apple website. The high-end headphones from the company, the Apple AirPods Max were originally launched for Rs 59,900 and will now cost Rs 66,100. In addition to this, the price of the third-gen AirPods Pro has been increased to Rs 26,300 from its former price of Rs 24,900.
The third-gen AirPods will now cost Rs 20,500, which is a Rs 2,000 hike from the previous price of Rs 18,500. Moreover, Apple has also increased the price of its 2nd gen AirPods which is now listed at Rs 14,100 as opposed to the old price of Rs 12,900. As mentioned before, these changes in the price of the audio products are currently being reflected only on Apple’s website and e-commerce partners like Amazon and Flipkart are still showing the previous pricing.
