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Comment by GFischer | Hacker News Reader

"Just ask yourself why there are so many people buying all those high end Android devices."

Over here (Uruguay), it's the network effect, and Android being cheaper (both perceived and in app availability).

Apple makes no efforts to cater to some particulars of Third World countries (like, no credit card even having enough income, and a strong dislike to tying it to anything). I wonder how they manage to be apparently strong in China. Android dominates in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East

App availability is much better for Android here.

Microsoft made many of Apple's screw-ups as well.

So, if you plan to buy a high end phone in Uruguay, 97% will end up buying an Android (and most of those will end up with a Samsung Galaxy, which is what the official carrier pushes).

Apple does have a lot of signalling value though :) and and iPhone is perceived as a luxury product too, but it's way more impractical here.

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Hi -

Really appreciate your comment. My startup, Nulu, is servicing Latin America with an English learning product with daily news content. Something you mentioned is that Apple makes no effort to cater to those who have no credit cards. Can you tell me a little more about how you and others would prefer to purchase devices and apps? How about products and services over the web?

I'm really quite interested as we're facing the same challenges you're speaking about.

Hi, I don't think there's a Latin-America wide answer to that unfortunately.

Here in Uruguay, the most popular method for payments is through a nationwide payments network, the two biggest being Abitab and RedPagos:

"Abitab and Red Pagos, channel some 49% transactions of the retail payment system, with credit cards (39%) and cheques (9%)"

https://twitter.com/marslombas/status/302521188939358209

The local Groupon clone, wOOw (www.woow.com.uy , which vastly outperforms Groupon here) uses mainly Abitab, as well as credit cards, with the important distinction of accepting locally issued credit cards which do not exist outside of Uruguay or Argentina.

In Argentina there exist similar payment networks (RapiPago and PagoFacil I think)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapipago

I'm not sure what the situation is in Brazil or Chile (I think they have ServiPag) or the rest of the Latin American countries.

There must be services to integrate with those payment methods easily, here in Uruguay we have CobrosYa

https://www.cobrosya.com/sitio/

It seems very primitive and it introduces a huge friction, especially for impulse purchases like apps.

Apple buyers here in Uruguay are usually wealthy and do have credit cards. The problem is Android users (the vast majority), which don't have a culture of paying for apps (and most have the attitude of just looking for the free equivalent).

I investigated starting a micropayments platform based on the cell phone, but I gave up due to the extreme complexity involved, but there's certainly a lot of opportunities to disrupt - and some are doing it like former coworkers who started Paganza:

http://www.paganza.com

Thank you so much - super useful information. It matches a lot of what we've discovered over the past several years looking into the market. If you don't mind my asking, what are the most effective ways of communicating "how to pay" to consumers in Uruguay? Any sites that you've seen that do a particularly good job?

You said it yourself: android is perceived as cheaper. The new middle class in China are practicing conspicuous consumption, and one of the ways they do that is by preferring luxury imports like louis Vuitton and apple.

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