Opinion: Mark Gurman Is Right About Apple’s Influencer Problem, and India Has It Worse

Mark Gurman rarely picks public fights. So when Bloomberg's Apple reporter posted on September 20 that Apple's new focus on influencers for events and product "reviews" is a serious issue, and that this echo chamber will lead to mediocrity, the tech world took notice and the post crossed 1.2 million views.

His complaint is that Apple now fills its launch events and review lists with people who only say positive things and never ask its executives a real question, and in return they get free devices, travel and more.

Having covered consumer tech in India for over twelve years, I can say that everything Gurman describes is happening here too and it's worse. And it's not just Apple, because almost every big smartphone brand in India now follows the same playbook.

What Gurman said, and why it matters

The influencer post was a reply to his own early take on the iPhone 18 Pro. He said most iPhone 17 Pro owners shouldn't upgrade unless they want to lock in trade-in value, that burgundy is a step down from orange, and that the reality is very different from what you see on TikTok. And in India it's Instagram where it's close to impossible that someone has not seen a creator showing how amazing the new colour of the iPhone 18 Pro is.

This is the kind of honest, money-saving advice you rarely hear from someone who has just returned from an all-expenses-paid trip to Apple Park.

The problem isn't new either. Replying to Gurman's post, Alexandre Lenoir, who led iCreate, once France's leading Apple magazine, said it became harder and harder for them to get Apple products until the magazine finally shut down. Over the years, critics have slowly been replaced by creators with huge followings and little interest in asking difficult questions.

How Burgundy became the story instead of the price

Look at how the iPhone 18 Pro was sold to Indian buyers over the last two weeks. The conversation online wasn't about whether a phone that looks almost the same as last year's deserves a much higher price, but about the new Burgundy colour shining under studio lights.

Apple Wants Cheerleaders, Not Critics, and It’s an Industry Problem

Photo Credit: Apple

Liking the colour is fair, and 9to5Mac's reviewer even called Burgundy their favourite this year. But when a colour becomes the whole pitch, the real issue gets buried.

That issue is the price in India. The iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at Rs 1,79,900, Rs 30,000 more than the iPhone 17 Pro Max's launch price, and the 2TB model costs Rs 1 lakh more than last year's top variant. You can check the full iPhone 18 Pro series pricing here.

For a phone increasingly assembled in India, that deserves loud questions. But creating FOMO around a colour is much easier than explaining a price hike, especially for a creator who has just been flown to Cupertino.

Indian coverage of the launch even featured Triptii Dimri and AP Dhillon at Apple Park, getting a close look at the phones with CEO John Ternus. It made for great content, but not much scrutiny.

Noone knows who started it, but everyone does it

It would be unfair to blame only Apple, because this has slowly become standard practice across the industry.

Samsung, for instance, planned its Galaxy S26 launch in India as a 72-hour cycle. Tech creators tested the phone first, lifestyle and fashion creators then showed off the camera and AI features, and gamers finally pushed its performance. Nowhere in that plan is anyone whose job is to ask whether the phone is worth its price.

These brands still invite journalists. Apple, for example, invited tech journalists from across India to its global launch in WWDC and the new iPhone launch and held a separate India showcase later.

But an invite list is only as meaningful as the conditions attached to it. As I found out myself, staying on that list can depend on not writing the wrong story.

The missing disclaimer problem

In India, there's one more layer to this. Many popular tech creators simply don't tell viewers when a video is sponsored, when the phone was sent free, or when a brand paid for their flights and hotels, so the video looks like a genuine opinion.

The data backs this up. The Advertising Standards Council of India found that 76% of India's top digital stars on the Forbes list broke disclosure rules in 2025, up from 69% a year earlier.

Even during the iPhone 17 launch, 21 influencer posts checked by ASCI were non-compliant, and 95% of them were corrected only after ASCI flagged them. That shows creators knew the rules but ignored them until they were caught.

These rules have real teeth, since the CCPA can impose penalties of up to Rs 10 lakh on individuals and Rs 50 lakh on companies for misleading ads. Until creators label their content honestly, their "honest reviews" deserve the same doubt you'd have for a TV ad.

Why Indian media also holds back

Blaming only YouTubers would be too convenient, because mainstream tech media in India has its own problems. The biggest one is access, since brands control event invites, review units and executive briefings.

I know from experience what happens when you write something a brand doesn't like. In June, 2026, I reported that Anuj Sharma, then Xiaomi India's CMO, was leaving the company, and soon after the story went live, Xiaomi reached out asking me to take it down.

I refused because the story was accurate. What followed was never announced or put in writing, but we were removed from Xiaomi's media list, launch updates and briefings stopped coming, and the same silence followed from POCO, Xiaomi's sub-brand.

The second problem is money. A large part of Indian digital tech publishing depends on branded content and brand partnerships, and an honest takedown of a flagship phone can make the next business conversation with that brand very difficult.

You can see both these fears in how launches are covered in India. Price hikes get explained away as supply chain issues, headlines focus on the new chip and colour, and the uncomfortable price sits in a table halfway down the page.

Plenty of stories will tell you which bank card gets you a discount, but very few will tell you whether you should buy the phone at all. This isn't true of everyone, and some journalists still write honestly and pay the price for it, but the fear is real and it shows in the diplomacy of the coverage.

This is not about Apple being the villain

Let me be clear about one thing. I'm not saying Apple is evil or that it should stop working with creators, because Apple is a business in the end, and its job is to make profits.

If flying creators to Cupertino and letting Burgundy reels do the selling helps Apple sell more iPhones in today's world, it makes no sense to expect the company to stop. Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Sony and every other brand following this path are making the same business decision.

The real question is for the media. Brands will always push their own story, and it has always been our job to test that story and tell readers when something is not worth their money. If the media loses that voice out of fear of losing invites or brand deals, it's the consumer who pays the price, sometimes quite literally, by spending well over what they earn in 3 months on a phone they did not need.

Before you trust the next launch-week review

Gurman's warning is aimed at Apple, but it applies to every brand following the same approach. For Indian buyers spending well over a lakh on a phone, the cost of this echo chamber is very real.

And if you wish to undersrtand a transparent and credible perspective on how to look at it, you can go through this tweet thread by noted journalist and tech critic Ershad Kaleebullah to have a balanced opinion on the matter.

So before you trust the next launch-week video, check whether the creator mentioned that the phone was sent free or the trip was sponsored, and whether the review talks about the price hike at all. If neither is there, it's safer to treat the video as an ad than as a review.