Iphones are such a craze that more than 200,000 units are estimated to be operational in India, all of which are unofficially unlocked versions. At 25k + price tag they don’t come cheap, however it has not stopped hoardes of people going after this much sought after mobile gadget. Having a Iphone is a status symbol, be it US or India !
So finally after several months of speculation, reports are in that Vodafone is going to launch Apple Iphone mobile handsets in India by September 2008.
Given that India is in midst of mobile revolution and expected to hit half-a-billion mark by the end of this decade, It is probably the best time to launch this high-end phone.
I am sure there are hundreds and thousands of users waiting in the ranks to acquire Iphone who have not taken the risk of getting a unlocked handset without any warranty attached. I can’t even think of putting in Rupees 25,000+ and not having a warranty !
But there sure are some questions:
Apple recently announced that they will be coming up with next generation 3G Iphone in June this year and the Iphone sold in India would be the first generation units. The rumored price tag in India for a 8GB Iphone would be around Rupees 27000/-. or 700/- dollars (which in US currently sells for $400). Will Indian consumers be ready to pay that kind of money for the older version of the phone?
Would be interested to know what readers think? Will they buy Iphone at this price tag?
Author: Arun Prabhudesai
Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin or get in touch with him at admin-at-trak-dot-in or 91.9822575676.Related posts:
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- Woof…Third generation IPhone for Rs. 8400/-
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- Is N96 Nokia’s response to Apple Iphone?
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- Nokia comes up with a relatively cheaper touch screen phone to woo Indian masses !
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{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, Apple wants to dump all its older iphones at a higher price in India. Watta business model! And Indians fall for these gimmicks with open arms. Good luck people.
Its unlikely that the tech savvey Indian consumer will fall for this. An 8 GB IPhone is available in the grey market for 21k-25k. While no doubt it will sell…how much remains a question. Also do you think i-phone will need to modified for indian monsoon? It becomes well nigh impossible to operate a convetional cell while u r stuck in the rains…so what r the chances of a Iphone surviving the rain with its touch screen?
iphone not water proof? I would expect it to be.
Muthu, Its not the question of being water-proof. Touch Screens are very susceptible to moisture and given the way Indian monsoon are, Ghosh comment makes sense…
Arun,
I don’t own a iphone, so wasn’t sure about the water proof part and was just wondering.
We develop a mobile search engine called mobeegal and are targeting Android for V1.0, but porting to iphone is something we might look at in the future.
Do you know, who’s going to carry GPhone to the Indian market?
Well I think a phone is to call. and that is what should be there , no use buying costly and feature laden phones
As of now not sure who is going to carry Gphone; But one of the names doing the rounds is Airtel. Also they have existing relationship with Google powering their search.
It is very embarassing to see Apple treating India as a dumping ground. 3G version launch in the US and then in the UK is so well known. In the UK, iPhone price was reduced by GBP 100 as a move to clear all the existing stocks.
Apparently, apple have realized that it is time to clear all the existing ones and best country for this is of course India. This is the country, where people buy stuffs for pride and do not care if they are really worth the money. One of the reasons, why every electronic items is damn costlier there.
But I guess nothing could stop corporates like Apple exploiting the market and the people from actually getting fooled everytime they buy something for a higher price than the rest of the world.
Airtel is in the news for pushing GPhone. We also heard Reliance InfoComm being interested. I hope GPhone would be carried by all of the carriers and not be exclusive to a particular special breed of carriers.
http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.
Saranya,
What would make you use your Cell phone for something other than call? Is there a dream feature that you would be wanting to use on your Cell phone and not being able to? I would be interested to know, since we develop a mobile search engine called mobeegal which would let mobile users to search and find stuff closer to them, locally.
http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.
Prabhu,
You have put it perfectly !
It is really sad to see India being looked at to empty their old inventory.
However, keep in mind that majority of rich Indians do not even know these updates on Iphone. They are just happy to have one for namesake as a status symbol…and Apple knows it !
When India is buying expensive bikes, cars, houses, holiday homes, holiday packages, LCD/PLASMA TVs, 2-tier A/C train tickets, a 25K+ mobile phone wont hurt too much I think. The support market will grow and benefit as well. Will iPhone (non-grey) sell in Reliance Digital? Cheers!
Shabbir,
Its not about the price. Its about greedy manufactures trying to dump stale products on you at a higher price. And you seem to more than happy to buy stale stuff. Good luck.
http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.
This phone comes with lots of bug and pain. Apple find the dump yard in India. It is better to wait for GPhone
Iphone coming to India has noting to do with dumping older models… Why will Iphone with 3.5G be launched in India when not a single operator has that network ? It will definitely have 2.0 firmware and that is good. Another thing is the price- iPhone in UK costs £300 = $600 can you tell the rational behind that ? Its not stepmotherly treatment by apple. It has always been like that . Prices of electronics is way too much in India …
Gphone is just the OS they have to be put into a phone which will be LG, Motorolla, Samsung. or HTC all members of Open alliance. And even if gphone (android) comes in india, I’ll not be interested in them because they are known to make bad and low quality phones. (read reviews about the phones they make)
Iphone on the other hand is a very good product and has a very good operating system and hardware under the hood which is improving at a pace which the competition is unable to catch up to. Its easy to fool a few but to fool everyone is unlikely. Now if you guys and girls don’t have an Iphone you will keep on speculating on what is good what is bad.. like moisture on touch screen and what not.. I’ll advise you to get one and then, then only will your thinking will change. Till then it will always seem to me that you are growling like grapes are sour
Interesting Comment Mr. Annonymous. I agree with your first part that Gphone is an OS contrary to the popular belief of it being a phone.
However, grapes being sour is something debatable :). I have many friends who have complained about Touch screen moisture, not something that I have put out of the blue. I am not sure if you have experienced Indian Monsoons.
Although I agree that Iphone built is quite good the moisture problem remains.
One of the commentators Prabhu owns an Iphone (comment no.8). I would be interested in knowing what are his views on this…
Android is the O/S developed by Google and members of Open Handset Alliance. GPhone stands for the devices that would run on this OS. If an iphone decides to run Android which is certainly possible, great it becomes a GPhone ;)
Android the mobile O/S is being pushed to as many devices as possible. We expect all of the major devices currently including Nokia, Sony etc., to support GPhone sooner or later.
http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.
If India doesn’t have 3.5G etc, why do we have Nokia N95 blah blah blah in the market? For moisture problem, you have to put a Rs 10 screen protector. I am not complaining about the phone as such. But just the price.
And in UK, the current price is GBP 159 which is not bad considering the ridiculous tax that is charged here and UK is always expensive for electronics.
If apple had released the phone for this price during the first month in India, I would have never complained.
I guess google engineers have to really work hard to convince someone like me from moving away from a apple product. Also remember, none of the google product is of production quality. A number of them part time projects which would continue to remain part time (beta) :)
Prabhu,
Yeah, the Google folks are working hard on Android. Even though Google products carry the “beta” label, it doesn’t mean its not of production quality. Android definitely is not in the production category yet, its only in the alpha stage.
Android seems to be in the right track atleast for now. If it can really free up the application developers from the mobile carriers and devices like its claiming to, then we’ll see a lot of innovative kickass applications for Android soon.
http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.
The current price is GBP 269 that too after the GBP 100 price rebate that apple gave .. check the apple uk store price …. http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore/
About Nokia / Sony adopting android .. i really doubt it especially with Nokia investing in developing a touchscreen version of symbian os 6.
I too own an iphone but never had the moisture problem.. maybe bangalore does not have that problem :)
and finally os should be complemented with a good hardware too.. iphone is the right mix of that. with 620 Mhz processor and 120 MB ram in it I don’t think I made a wrong choice,.. HTC has 201 MHz processor and it is priced at 18K in india.. what a waste…
oh sorry the 3.5G version… ya i had Nokia N80 for 1 year and did not use its 3G features…
so what is the use of having that feature .. I’m happy that my current version of I phone does not have 3G because 1) the chip used to be more power consuming than the 2G version, I had to switch of UTMS network in my N80 to get better battery output. and 2) That is totally useless untill you are actually in a 3G network. Its like having a radio without having any channels to listen to..
For me if iphone had 3G capabilities it would have not made any difference.
Android / mac osX / Symbian :- you really can’t discriminate between them because all are based on unix and all have software development kits.
One thing that mac osX has is that they have to support only 1 hardware type so its easy for them to make an os which supports only 1 type of hardware. Others have multiple hardware to support which is more or less like what windows is for pc.
The demo video of android shows most of the capabilities which iphone already has… I doubt I’ll be making a discrimination on the basis of just the name of the OS, even though the features are the same. And my current hots is on iPhone. I got it from US – thanks to my bro :) it saved me some 10K .
Electronics has been very costly in india. Right from nano to hi-definition tvs. I got my laptop from US and saved some 20K on it. I really don’t know the logic behind that.
Haah, I will better buy a smart phone and a xbox 360 in that price
hi all,
iphone- iphone ,
now people hav more money to spend on such things this is the one face of the coin on the other hand people don’t hav money to even hav two time food in a day. let’s make a community and come forward to work for those who do not have cloths and all
hey hii..
i’m getting a iphone 3G from uk.. is it possible to use that model in india..
i’ve vodafone connection.. do i hav to make some alterations before using it..
pls help me out..
guys i thk u all are not fully aware about apple its marketing strategies and iphone , iphone was already short of stock few months before when they were stopped in production and iphone coming in india is 3g model iphone 2.0 and will be available in 199$ all over the world with no increase in price , for more details you can look at the apple website it has a wwdc 2008 keynote where steve jobs tells everything about iphone and its pricing and all . plz see to it you will be shocked to see that and then u will not have to see anything about iphone elsewhere.
well ,wat ever it is!now iphone 3g is just 199$.so very soon the so called navigators and other gsm phones will come down very soon…in this way atleast apple company is helping india wid out their mental presence ……….
subbu
what ever the comments may be but regarding the price it was the best and defeneatly youth will be fida for this mobile no doubt there will be a huge sales for this mobile. just take an ex china mobiles came to the markt with all the options with just 4500 but all the people know that its life is max 1 yr but so many people are buying it. so what i think is there will be a tremendous sales for this mobile.