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The Latest News on the iPhone. Read it Here First at UTVi
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Vodafone has officially declared its prices for iPhone 3G in India.

For all those who have pre-booked the iPhone, its an advantage since the sale is on first come first serve basis.

iPhone 3G would be available in 8GB and 16GB priced at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively. Also check out the various iPhone tariff plans.

And to be among the initial few to buy the iPhone, one needs to deposit Rs. 10000 by cash or credit card at select Vodafone Store on August 20 and 21 by showing the iPhone booking SMS. After which appointment shall be given to those customers for iPhone demo and paying the balance amount.

Airtel is also likely to announce its prices soon and are expected to be on similar lines.

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Posted by Rajesh at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments

Only a scant crowd turned up for the midnight launch of Apple's iPhone in New Delhi Friday. It included a high school student, who said he wants to show off the gadget in school, and an entrepreneur who bought six sets for himself and his friends.

Daytime saw a handful more customers like executive, Abhishek Jain, turn up at a New Delhi store to buy the iPhone. Jain is hugely impressed by the device, which combines a music and video player, cellphone and web browser.

"No other phone can match it," he said. "This is the best phone available in the world. I am very excited, I am very, very excited."

But there was no sign of people queuing up for hours, or the kind of craze witnessed when the iPhone was launched in several European and Asian countries last month.

Part of the reason is the cost - the iPhone is selling for over $700 in India, triple its price in the United States. That is because unlike the United States, Indian mobile operators are not subsidizing the phone.

Airtel, one of the companies which launched the iPhone, has shrugged off the high price tag, saying it is targeting the "high-end achiever and youth segment."

But many young people, like Ankita Chaudhury, doubt whether they will buy the iPhone anytime soon.

"I don't know if I want to buy it or not because it's priced pretty high," she said.

Chief editor at technology publisher CyberMedia, Prasanto K. Roy, says the price will impact sales.

"There are lots of people who have been waiting for two years for this, and they are going to put down the money," he said. "But the numbers are clearly not going to be anywhere near what we could have expected, not simply because of the price itself, but because there is visibility of price worldwide, and this is three times the U.S. price, so you can actually order it off e-Bay including customs duty, so that actually puts quite a dampener on the whole thing."

In fact, according to a recent survey, 150,000 iPhones, bought in other countries, are already being used in India. The phones can be unlocked with software easily available in the gray market.

But the companies selling the iPhone are hoping that people will now prefer to buy it in India to get full benefits such as the guarantee.

The model being sold in India is the same as that launched in other markets - the 3G or third generation phone, although India has yet to launch 3G networks.

India is one of the biggest markets for mobile handsets - 95 million were sold last year. Most of these are lower priced phones, but there is also a huge demand for high-end phones among the growing numbers of wealthy and middle class people in the country.

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Posted by Rajesh at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments

At the special even organised by Apple’s Steve Jobs, to announce its new generation of iPods and iTunes at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Steve also announced that the prices of Apple iPhone had been reduced, effective immediately.

Apple's iPhone

The 8GB iPhone now costs $399, a $200 discount off the initial launch price for Apple’s first mobile phone, released just 10 weeks ago. Apple apparently has plans to phase out the 4GB model.

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Posted by Rajesh at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments

The multiple connectivity issues faced by new iPhone 3G owners could be due to issues with the Infineon 3G chip.
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Gigaom reports that the multiple connectivity issues faced by new iPhone 3G owners could be due to issues with the Infineon 3G chip.

Since the launch of the iPhone 3G, there were complaints related to poor reception and low speeds. AT&T was blamed - but the company denied of any issues with its network, while adding that they would look in to all the complaints on a case-by-case basis..

With similar reports started coming in from other networks as well, looks like AT&T might have been right after all. The latest news is that the Infineon 3G chips used in the latest edition of the iPhone could be the cause of these connectivity issues. Richard Windsor, a Nomura Securities analyst quips, "We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier." If this indeed turns out to be an issue with the chip, it would be the second major reported chip failure this year. Nvidia grabbed the headlines a few days ago when some of its laptop graphic chips were found to be faulty owing to poor packaging.

To make things worse, these kinds of faults cannot be fixed by a simple firmware flash. It's not clear if Infineon makes these chips themselves or outsources the manufacturing to others. Product recall looms large? Let's wait and watch.

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Posted by Rajesh at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

What’s the real price of iPhone in India? While the initial frenzy of $199, i.e. Rs. 8,000/ has settled down, it’s time to look at the price component of iPhone in US.

As per iSuppli report:

* Manufacturing cost of new iPhone is $173 (excluding the cost of developing software, which will be amortized in the long run) - drop of $53 from the earlier version.
* iPhone is sold to operators for $300+ (under the new deal with AT&T, Apple no longer receives a portion of the carrier’s revenue from service subscriptions)
* The current price of $199 is the subsidized price with operators taking a hit of ~$300

US operators have all the reason to take the ~$300 hit since the inbuilt core of iPhone will help them maximize their revenue/ARPU - i.e. 3G support will help them upsell lot of data related services.
And what about iPhone’s price in India?

Given that ARPU is sliding downwards, Indian operators do not have any incentive to bring down the price of iPhone.

Vodafone and Airtel are unwilling to talk about the price they will offer the iPhone at, but Bharti Airtel CEO Manoj Kohli told TOI there is no question of subsidising the handset in India. “US operators are able to subsidise handsets because they can make up for that with their call charges. They charge rates like 25 cents a minute. In India, the charge is 1.5 to 2 cents a minute,” Kohli said. [ET]

Essentially that means iPhone could be priced somewhere around $499, i.e. 21K?

To add to the context, India is not the most important market for Apple - 50% of Indian handsets are still on ULCH (i.e. ultra low cost handsets) and 3G infrastructure is a distant reality.

If Nokia plays it’’s cards well and get Internet/data activity on ULCH, they can penetrate the BoP segment and secure their market share.

To add colors to the story, iPhone’s nearest competitor, N95 is priced @ Rs. 25K, N96@ Rs. 36K and HTC’s Touch Diamond @ Rs. 27K.

How much are you willing to pay for iPhone, knowing the fact that you can’t avail the benefits of much hyped feature, i.e.3G support.

Take the poll. (poll is closed now- check out the poll results here)

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Posted by Rajesh at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments