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.
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08-22-2008, 3:10 PM
