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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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 »

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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Global mobile phone majors Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and others are offering a slew of products including touchscreen and music capable handsets in India to counter the might of Apple’s iPhone, which is expected to hit the markets in September.

Handset vendors in the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market have worked out the strategies, to be ready for the onslaught of the iPhone.

US-based Motorola, which already has an array of smart phones in the country, recently launched ROKR E8 in India. A music phone, it has features such as FastScroll navigation wheel (a navigation wheel like that in iPods) and haptics technology that transforms the device from a phone to a music player in one touch. This is in addition to other touchscreen phones including the MOTOMING A1200 and MOTOROKR E6.
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The much-awaited 3G iPhone is likely to cost a fortune in India, unlike in global markets, with Indian service providers unlikely to subsidise the gadget, like AT&T in the US and O2 in Germany.

Moreover, a fear of unlocking (cracking) and a likely flooding of counterfeit iPhones in the market are also likely to keep Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Essar — the two service providers – from subsidising the handset.

According to industry sources, prices of the latest iPhone (Version 2.0) would be at least double the amount of that in the US. The 8-gb version of the gizmo is likely to be priced between Rs 16,000 and 18,000, while the 16-gb would cost around Rs 24,000 to Rs 28,000 in the country.
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Vodafone and Airtel started pre-registering customers for the iPhone 3G this week, and ever since, offices and blogs have been abuzz with discussions on what Apple’s much-awaited product will be priced at.

Many think it will be just a shade over Rs 8,000 — the rupee equivalent of the price in the US, which is $199. Now, that’s a fantastic price for the 8GB product, and will certainly have every competitor worried.

Nokia’s 8GB N95 smartphone , for instance, is priced at well over Rs 25,000, and its new N96 is expected to come at over Rs 36,000. But we think the iPhone, expected to hit the Indian market in September, will be priced substantially higher than Rs 8,000.
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Here comes the news that would surely give all the iPhone enthusiasts huge adrenaline rush. Yeah, as the headlines suggest, Vodafone has, today, opened up registrations for the brand new iPhone 3G.

Although the phone hasn’t been officially launched in India as yet nor has any date been officially announced, the very fact that the registrations have been thrown open is an indication of this beauty’s arrival in the Indian market, very soon.
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Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, unveiled a less expensive, faster and more powerful iPhone, almost a year after the original device helped spark a surge of interest in smart phones and positioned Apple as a leading player in the field.

The new model fixes some of the most glaring shortcomings of the iPhone, which brought Apple’s renowned simplicity and functionality to mobile phones. Analysts said the announcements signalled Apple’s intention to challenge Nokia for supremacy in the mobile phone market.

Most importantly the iPhone2.0 as Jobs called it, runs on 3G mobile networks rather than the slower Edge networks, and will sell for $199 for an 8GB device and $299 for a 16GB model. The original 8GB device sold for $599 when it went on sale last year. The new model will go on sale on July 11.

New iPhone in Images
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Apple’s iPhone will be available from more than one mobile operator in Australia and India later this year, further signs that Apple is breaking with its history of exclusive iPhone distribution agreements with operators in other markets.

On Monday, SingTel announced it had struck a deal with Apple to distribute the iPhone in Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines.

The announcement follows Vodafone’s agreement with Apple, announced last week, to sell the iPhone in 10 countries including Australia, India and Italy. On the same day, Telecom Italia announced that it too would distribute the iPhone in Italy, the first sign that Apple was moving away from only signing exclusive deals.
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It was recently announced that iPhone is being launched in India around September 2006 by Vodafone, almost a year after it was first introduced in US.

India is a unique iPhone market because of the fact that we already have thousands of iPhone users who have been using unlocked iPhones in India. Apart from the obivious question about the price, there are some more answers that eager iPhone fans in India seek from Apple/Vodafone.

1. Tariff Plans

Since the phone will be in partnership with Vodafone, it will most certainly be carrier locked by them but.. Is Vodafone going to introduce special (read costly) tariff plans for iPhone users or can any Vodafone postpaid user be eligible to buy and use iPhone? AT&T has some special iPhone plans and has also classified some of its existing plans as ‘qualifying iPhone plans’. Secondly, will iPhone be available pan-India or only in select geographical regions?
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