Smartphone sales in India may suffer from a higher tax on handsets costing more than US$37 just as Apple beefs up efforts to tap demand for data services in the world’s second-largest mobile-phone market, reports “Bloomberg” (http://tinyurl.com/c3fpoue).
Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram says he will raise the excise tax on high-end phones to 6% from 1% to help finance welfare programs for the country’s poor and fund the widest budget deficit among the largest emerging economies. India’s government, after attempting to squeeze wireless operators including the Vodafone Group, Bharti Airtel with higher license fees and airwave tariffs, is now targeting handsets for revenue from an industry that has boomed since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opened the economy more than two decades ago, notes “Bloomberg.”