Apple iPhone goes on sale in India from today (Aug 22, 2008) onwards by Airtel (link) and Vodafone (link).

Price in INR: 8GB iPhone: 31,000 and 16GB iPhone: 36,100.

This is definitely more expensive than the ‘no commitment’ 8GB iPhone sold by AT&T in US for $599, which is roughly Rs 25,000, which is a valid amount for the product we are getting. The only problem is the hype, media created and Apple created around the world by stating it as a $199 device. $199 is AT&T price and not Apple price. AT&T subsidizes the initial price of the phone so that anyone can afford it and then charge them with call and data rates which are higher than most of the world. Simple. I wonder how much would have Apple sold it for in their stores for an unlocked, free to use with any GSM operator, iPhone.

Anyways, price apart, its a great phone and has an amazing WOW factor for the first time your will use it.

One more thing. Whats the point of selling a 3G iPhone in India when our mobile networks are still 2G.  I have used a 2G iPhone and it is equally good to use as 3G iPhone. Earlier version has almost all the features the new 3G iPhone has. Apple could have launched the 2G phone at a much lesser price in India and other countries where we have 2G networks.

Apple as always make great products for people with good taste and good money. For rest of us there are very decent phones available from Nokia (on Symbian) and HTC (on Windows) which offer all the features (and much more) that are being offered by iPhone at a much reasonable price. The only thing missing is the taste or the WOW factor that iPhone has.

In the end I would say, don’t lose heart. Find someone going to US. Ask them to get a $199 iPhone (Thank you AT&T) and then get it unlocked and use it at will. This is similar to Windows XP or Vista. If you can pay, then pay, else there’s always a pirated version available if you can find it.  Apple is also learning the tricks of the trade from Microsoft. In long term the money you make depends more on how many people use it rather than how WOW your product is. Thats how Microsoft did it and that’s how Apple is now doing it. Apple doesn’t mind it so far as the bill ( subsidized price for the unlocked or pirated $199 iPhones) is getting footed by someone else (Read: AT&T and their subscribers!!).

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