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 ?