UnwireIndia

Apple, the US consumer electronics and software company, is close to opening its iTune Store in India. iTune Store, the world’s most popular online entertainment store, offers songs, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks and iPod games.

Apple will open iTune Store “immediately” to enable users buy legitimate entertainment content for their iPods, touch iPods, Mac PCs and iPhones, according to sources. To buy files through the store, a user requires a valid credit card with a billing address in the country of purchase.
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Spice mobile has announced the launch of its new handset S-820 for the music lover, with a Yamaha audio amplifier which ensures 3D surround sound.

The external memory of the phone can be expanded to 1GB which can store music and other multimedia content. With a built in FM player receiver, the phone can record FM radio too. The phone also comes with a wireless stereo Bluetooth headset providing a wireless experience.
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Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar will on Friday launch Apple’s third-generation (3G) iPhone in India, a nation with an estimated population of 1.13 billion, where one in five people owns a mobile phone.

Two models will be up for grabs: one with 8GB memory (in black colour) and another 16 GB (white and black) for Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100, respectively. Airtel is currently accepting an advance booking charge of Rs 5000. The gadget will be delivered after paying the remaining amount on or after Friday.

US telecom provider AT&T is selling the phone in that country at a subsidized rate of $199 (around Rs 8600). Read the rest of this entry »

Competition in Kenya’s telecommunications industry is heating up as the latest entrant in the market announced plans to make the biggest investment in the industry in recent years.

India’s Essar Global Ltd. will invest US$500 million over two years in Kenya’s newest mobile phone service operator, Econet Wireless Kenya Ltd., to set up a network, among other things, said S. Srinivasa, the East Africa director for the group. Srinivasa spoke to journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, late Wednesday.

Econet Wireless Kenya Ltd. CEO Michael Foley said the investment will also pay for licenses for other telecommunications services and the establishment of a wireless broadband service. Foley said the mobile phone network would be running by the end of November. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the week of the geeks, as the Apple iPhone finally was officially launched in India amidst fanfare. Both the official operators for the phone Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar launched the phone at midnight across eight cities.

But the launch was a far cry from that witnessed in international markets where iPhone lovers had queued up the whole night to buy the handset. Only 35-40 people had lined up to buy the coveted smartphone at midnight.
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The BBC World Service Trust has launched a ringtone campaign to promote the use of condoms in India, where about 2.5 million people are living with HIV.

The central message of the “condom condom” campaign being run on radio, TV and the Internet is that “smart men use condoms”.

A scene in the TV ad, a mobile ringtone buzzes with a loud refrain “condom! condom!” during a wedding. Though the man holding the mobile feels it embarrassing, those around him consider him to be a smart and responsible person.
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Idea Cellular, India’s fifth-largest mobile operator, on Wednesday launched services in Mumbai, with aims of getting 20 percent of the city’s new users over the next year and breaking even in the zone in four years.

India’s financial capital has been a lucrative zone for telecom firms, but with more than 80 percent of the city’s population owning mobile phones, compared with an all-India average of just 26 percent, the pace of addition has slowed down.
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Wire & Wireless (India) Ltd, Zee’s demerged cable TV distribution company, is planning to raise up to Rs 4.5 billion through a rights issue to part fund its expansion programme.

The company has a funding requirement of Rs 10 billion over four years, a large part of which will go towards digitalisation and last mile acquisition of cable operators.
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It’s all about first movers advantage. Nokia Nseries, the multimedia sub-brand of Nokia has gone ahead and launched N96 - its converged device in India. Optimized for web access and entertainment, the dual-slide Nokia N96 is a blend of style and cutting edge technology and represents a whole new chapter in mobile technology. N96 is the first ever mobile device to offer a memory size of 16GB expandable to 24 GB through an external micro SD card, allowing consumers to store hours of media and be entertained on the go.

It will be available across the country starting September 2008. Nokia also announced a pre-booking scheme, offering consumers the opportunity to secure the N96 in advance. The offer will be valid through 2000 Nokia outlets across the country starting August 20, 2008.
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Cellular operators on Monday fiercely opposed telecom regulator TRAI’s recommendation to allow internet service providers to offer unrestricted internet telephony services, saying it would be against the basic principle of level-playing field.

The GSM operators lobby COAI Director General T V Ramachandran demanded that there should be level playing field and that telecom regulator TRAI’s recommendations are against the very basic principle of level-playing field since they allow unrestricted internet telephony to ISPs at no additional cost.
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