Exorbitantly-priced smartphones will suffer most from excise duty hike

These are weird times for the smartphone world. High-spec'ed phones are regularly being released with a price tag exceeding Rs 40,000, while last-year’s flagship phones are being positioned as mid-range. One big example is the 720p screen, which no longer befits a flagship, if you were to ask Sony and HTC.But with the hike in excise duty, these very same phones will see a bump in their price from April 1, 2013. So if Rs 45,000 is exorbitant, how would you classify Rs 48,000 or more? That’s how much phones in this range are expected to cost once the hike comes into play. Phones like the HTC Butterfly, Apple iPhone 5, HTC One X+ aren’t record beaters by any margin when it comes to sales. If anything, these lag behind the likes of Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3, and a slew of mid-to-high-end phones.