Date:21/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/21/stories/2008082151352400.htm

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Now coming to India: the iPhone 3G

Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE: The second incarnation, this time in ‘3G,’ of Apple’s phone phenomenon, the iPhone, has come to India just a month after its launch in the United States. Two leading mobile operators, Airtel and Vodafone, will sell the phone starting Friday. And they have announced identical pricing.

The new iPhone model which harnesses 3rd generation cellular phone networks (high-speed Internet, voice, text, sound and video) is, in reality, a neatly packaged combo of a mobile phone, an Internet device and Apple’s iconic music player iPod.

By also throwing in a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for satellite-based location technology access, it challenges the current generation of smart phones.

The pricing announced by the two mobile providers is: Rs. 31,000 for the model with 8 gigabytes of memory and Rs. 36,100 for the 16 GB model. This price is a bundle of their Internet-plus-cellular service with the handset.

This might seem stiff compared to the current price of the 3G iPhone in the U.S. — $199 (about Rs. 8500). But that is the price charged by telecom provider AT&T, who adds different tariff slabs for the services. Since they tend to be much higher in the West compared to India, they heavily subsidise the phone and make their money by tying the customer to annual subscriptions.