So here we are.. finally the much awaited iPhone is to be launched in INDIA tomorrow. Just like everyone i was also excited to get my hands on an iPhone. But i am very much disappointed after airtel and vodafone announced their iPhone prices.
31K for an 8Gb model and 36K for a 16Gb model. It strange to know that the same iPhone is $199 in US which comes to around Rs.8600/- only. Adding to the list of negatives, There is no 3G in India. US citizens enjoy the speed of 3G but still they pay less!! The service provider situation is no different from US. The iPhone we are going to get in India is also a locked one. U cannot use anyother SIM other than airtel's on ur airtel-iPhone, its locked to the service provider (God knows for how long.. they haven't revealed it yet).
The SMS interface adds to the woes of the iPhone in the Indian market. we people are used to texting.. so getting used to an on-screen keypad is going to take sometime. We indians are so used to Bluetooth file sharing between phones. But sadly the iPhone doesnt have this feature in it!! So putting it all together, we Indians are not going to use/exploit all the features on the iPhone.. Then why such a high price?
It's a known fact that SPs in India cannot benefit from value added services like SPs in US.. but still SP's in India hope to get revenue from value added services by locking the iPhone to their SIM. The hardware cost of iPhone comes to Rs.22K.. So an unlocked iPhone should not cost you more than 25K.. Hope they realize this with time and the prices are slashed soon.
