Looks like iPhone 3GS is finally hitting the Indian shores on 26 March 2010. Bharti Airtel announced the availability of the iPhone 3GS on its network in a press release on 24 March 2010.
As expected, the price of the phone is absurdly high. Here is a run down:
| Model | Price (INR) |
| iPhone 3GS 16GB | 35,500 |
| iPhone 3GS 32GB | 41,500 |
As you can see both Bharti Airtel and Apple executives in India have gone out of their mind. Selling a phone which is available at $299 in the US at $780 in India is not only foolish, but a bad business move. Whatever happened to Apple’s goal to put iPhone in as many hands as possible? Indian consumers are probably the most cost-conscious buyers in the world, and doing this will only hurt Apple’s business here as it is anyways touted as an “expensive” brand here.
Airtel is throwing in 500 MB of free data every month for the first year for iPhone 3GS buyers in India. Apparently, they fail to understand that someone who would buy a phone priced at > 30k in India probably won’t mind paying 100 rupees per month for a GPRS plan.
It is clearly evident that Apple is planning to launch the next version of the iPhone in the US this summer and wants to get rid of the existing stock of iPhone 3GS and 3G by selling them in the third world countries at high prices. To put salt on the wounds, they have decreased the price of iPhone 3G 8GB model by 1500 INR to 29,500. Yeah. Thanks and fuck you.
What’s next? An iPad priced at 50k? And they wonder why people buy stuff from US when its also available in India.
[via airtel.in]
2 responses to “Airtel launches iPhone 3GS in India, no surprises”
Who cares for an expensive iPhone when there are expensive Android phones around 😛
BTW, you might want to beep the F word in your posts!
Wow…The pricing is pathetic!!.HTC HD 2 is 37000..And has amazing features then this …What pricing !!