Apple has finally launched its iTunes Store in India after a long long wait. Until now, users in India were unable to buy music or rent movies using iTunes and purchases were limited to a few free books and podcasts. (Of course, you could easily bypass that restriction if you had a US based Apple ID).That was until yesterday. Starting now though, you can use our iTunes account to purchase and rent content and pay for them using the Indian Rupee.
Apple has redesigned the iTunes Store page with localized content and to everyone’s surprise, has priced the content pretty decently. A song for example would cost you just 7 Rupees and would go up to Rs. 15. This compares well with Flipkart’s pricing which currently sells single tracks for Rs.15. An entire Album on the iTunes Store will set you back by a minimum of Rs. 7- – which is no too bad either. As for movies, you can rent SD (Standard resolution) movies for Rs.80 and purchase SD movies for Rs.290. As for HD content, they are available for rent at Rs. 120 and for purchase at Rs. 490 respectively.
The only thing that seems to be missing on the Indian iTunes Store are popular TV Shows. But we assume that won’t be much of an issue for most of us.
The iTunes Music Store made its debut as an US only product back in 2003. More countries were added to the supported list gradually. In the latest move, 12 Asian countries were added back in June 2012. Indian users had to wait until now, though.
Apart from the ability to purchase music and movies, Indian users can now also use Apple’s Match service which will let them store their own content – not purchased from Apple to their iCloud account.
The arrival of the iTunes Store in India will surely be seen as a huge challenge by existing biggies in the sector – including Nokia Music which has been around here for quite some time.