Apple iPhone was launched with a lot of buzzes in India. Two popular carriers launched the phone simultaneously at sky high rates. But it seems that the lack of basic features like SMS FW, Bluetooth etc has gone against the iPhone 3G in India.
People here buy iPods and pay Rs 500 to small technicians just to load the songs and videos in it. Many iPod users haven’t heard what iTunes is, in such a market selling something like iPhone 3G to the masses is difficult. iPhone has its own audience and guesses what? Vodafone and Airtel (Apple included) have failed to serve them well. Here, is the update from both Vodafone and Airtel as of today!
- Vodafone is no longer selling iPhone 3G in India – CONFIRMED! Vodafone relationship center in Mumbai informed me that they have stopped the sales of iPhone 3G since over a month now. All accessories and the stock have been withdrawn from the outlet (so that the phone didn’t go out of stock). Update: Vodafone updates us that iPhone is still pretty much on sale. Its just that some stores are running low on stock due to high demand.
- 16GB iPhone 3G was available in India, but White colour was not launched.
- Airtel currently has only 8GB iPhone 3G in stock, no update on availability of 16GB. (White 16GB ruled out)
Is poor sales / lack of demand the reason for Vodafone withdrawing the iPhone 3G from India? I was informed that Blackberry Storm with 16GB memory and price tag of Rs 27999 has replaced the iPhone.