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iPhone 3G goes on sale in India Tomorrow

croozeus | 21 August, 2008 19:23

Following my previous post : Will iphone launch in India, affect Nokia ? below is some more follow up.

Two of India’s biggest mobile operators viz. Airtel and Vodafone have now officially announced the availability and pricing for the iPhone, ending over 2 months of rumors and speculations. The iPhone 3G goes on sale on August 22nd, 2008 throughout India.

A country with 350 million mobile subscribers has long waited for the launch of the iPhone 3G. However these eagerly anticipating people had a rude shock when the two operators announced the pricing of the iPhone. Every one was expecting the iPhone 3G to be priced at par with the price that was announced for the US market i.e $199. According to the official press releases the 8GB model of the iPhone 3G has been priced at Rs. 31,000 while the 16GB model have been priced at Rs. 36,100. (1$ approx. equals 40 Rs)

So how would the iPhone fare in the Indian Market? 

 Here are some of the reasons by smstextnews.com

 

1. The iPhone has been launched in a market where individuals think twice before spending anything over Rs. 15,000 (GBP 185) for their handsets. Again, he does not wish to be bound in a contract by the carrier, and is free to change carriers everyday if he wishes to. It is only the elite individuals that spend upwards of Rs. 15K on their phones, though they comprise only a small portion of the total population.
2. The market is predominantly ruled by Nokia and Sony-Ericsson phones, with Samsung or Motorola not too far behind. These companies are known to add much of the high-end features into all their phone. Hence, features such as High-Megapixeled cameras, video recordings, ability to forward text messages, memory expansion slots are seen as a necessity by everyone, something that lacks in the iPhone.
3. Absence of 3G network. It may be hard to believe, but a country of 350 million mobile subscribers does not have 3G networks. This makes one of the best feature of the iPhone to be rendered useless in the country. Not just that, the GPRS and EDGE services offered my many operators are pathetic to say the least. This again makes browsing on iPhone a not-so-enjoyable task. Finding WiFi spots in the country is as easy as finding a water fountain in the desert.
4. No iTunes Store makes a lot less enjoyable. Yes, Apple did launch the iTunes Store for India and other surrounding countries, but the only things available there are the Apps from the App Store. This, again, requires the user to have a user account by signing up with a credit card, something which is not easy to find among a majority of the mobile subscribers. And the lack of media content via the iTunes Store is not acceptable either.
 

Airtel has decided to have a launch event at the stroke of midnight tonight, opening the gates to three of its many stores in the country. The phones will be provided on a first come-first serve basis. However, I feel there would be more news reporters than customers.

What do you think ?

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PyS60 Talks #2 : Conclusion

croozeus | 19 August, 2008 09:56

 

We had the second session of PyS60 Talks yesterday. 

For those who are not aware about the new PyS60 Talks, please check it out here !

Agenda for PyS60 Talks #2 was PyS60 Extensions.

Again, I have to say we had a descent audience, handful of PyS60 Enthusiastics and PyS60 Extension developers.

The discussions were mainly pertaining to the agenda i.e. PyS60 Extensions.

Possiblity of new extensions and their implementation was the key discussion.

Finally, a list was drawn on the basis of the discussion for the most needy PyS60 Extensions :

Image processing, new missed calls, themes, audio processing (format conversion), cell info display, sound synthesiser, Battery Status (more accurate than sysagent), MAC Address, Xprofile for 2nd Edition, etc

And did I hear SIS decompiler somewhere in the discussion ? Wink

 

Now for the lucky draw, for all those who sent us their email addresses during the talks : As the Talks focussed on C++ Extensions - we decided to give away a book for C++.

The lucky winner is Rookie.

Congratulations to Rookie ! Hope you learn from the book and make some good extensions for PyS60 in the time to come.

Bogdan will contact you soon, for your prize, at the email address you provided.

  

For those who missed the first session, there would be more sessions of Talks where you can participate.

Stay tuned to Croozeus.com and here for details regarding PyS60 Talks #3 ! 

Until next time, au revoir !

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PyS60 Talks #2 : PyS60 Extensions

croozeus | 12 August, 2008 21:48

 

Its time for PyS60 Talks #2 !

For those who are not aware about the new PyS60 Talks, please check it out here !

Schedule for PyS60 Talks #2 :  

Date : 18 August 2008 (Monday )

Time : 13:30 GMT to 15:30 GMT

Agenda / Discussion Topic : PyS60 Extensions

PyS60 Talks #2 would cover discussions on PyS60 Extensions : Using and creating extensions, for 2nd and 3rd edition devices. The talks would also cover discussions on : Feature requests that can be implemented by writing Pys60 Extensions in C++. 

This time also the duration of the talks has been kept 2 hours, from 13:30 GMT to 15:30 GMT. Thus more people would be able to attend it. 

How to join the Pys60 Talks : 

  1. Go to http://www.mibbit.com/
  2. Write #pys60talks as the channel
  3. Pick a nickname for yourself (this has to be unique, so try to come up with something more original than “Henry” or "John")
  4. Click connect.

The channel is currently protected with a password and will be opened at the beginning of the session. Me and Bogdan will be joining from our side. Hope to see all the participants of PyS60 Talks #1, once again. 

Few interested people had missed out the first session PyS60 Talk, hope you can make it up this time.

Note: When you enter the #pys60talks channel, just PM me (Croozeus) or bogdan your name and email address. We would use it for surprises (if any) after the talks ! This is not compulsory.

Hope to see you all at the Talks ! Smile

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