Bharti Airtel Rumored to Launch First iPhone 3G in India - on August 22, 2008
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Amidst all the speculations regarding the launch date of the brand new iPhone 3G in India, since the very first day Vodafone came out with initial registrations, Economic Times finally comes up with the official launch date of the “super-phone” as August 22, 2008. It seems, it is going to be Airtel to pioneer the much touted touch-phone’s launch in India, giving mobile companies like NOKIA, Samsung and Motorola something to think about.
From the stroke of midnight on August 21, the iPhone shall be available to millions of Airtel subscribers at their Relationship Centers.
Although everyone is going gung-ho about the 3G capabilities of the newest iPhone and its capability to load pages at least 3 times faster than any phone currently in the market, such a scenario is very far-sighted unless the government manages to clean up its act on the allocation of 3G spectrum in the country, in near future. What should also make Indians think twice before buying it is the prospect of being able to listen to music tracks only either by downloading tracks off Apple’s official iTunes store or by synchronizing the playlists on a Mac, which is anyway pretty rare scene in India.
The pricing of this revolutionary phone is still a shrouded figment of imagination for the general public but if the blogosphere’s views are anything to go by, India just might manage to buy the phone for just about Rs 10,000. Personally, I feel Indian telecom operators should come up with dual pricing system – in one, they should charge a minimal amount at start and force users to pay a premium monthly charge; for the other, customers are asked to buy the phone at a premium price and then allowed the freedom to choose any talk plan that might already be offered by the operator.
Moreover, just in case you still happen to be in a hurry to get your hands on the iPhone and do not have enough patience to wait till end August, you can also manage to buy off unlocked iPhones already available in the Indian market for quite a while now. However, I shall suggest you go through this excellent piece of FAQs created by Digital Inspiration regarding unlocked iPhones.
To conclude off this post, for now, here’s an article that just might manage to force you think twice before you actually end up in that queue outside Airtel’s Relationship Center, for the iPhone. 
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dual pricing u got to be kidding me operators abroad charge force rentals cos they provide 3g services which compensate the user…….if in india airtel starts to enforce fixed rentals on iphone then what would be that for voice calls or just advanced gprs……………
and the point of selling iphones cheap is not at profitable for this companies as they go for cheap phones high rental then they would be able to corner less audience and if they do it vice versa they would be inviting ire from other handset makers and their shareholders…..cos companies selling just handsets and services gets a lot less pe than the services one………
now ET has also published the figure of grey market iphone handsets in india 0.6millions but how many of them has even subscribed to a data plan….not many though……..
btw looks like watteam reading too much ECONOMIC TIMES now-a-days so i have to stop reading it in the morning cos i can read all those news here……..