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— Ramesh Sharma

Mr Sanjay Kapoor, President, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, at a press conference to announce the launch of iPhone, in the Capital on Thursday.

Thomas K Thomas

New Delhi, Aug. 21 Even as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar are gearing up to launch the much-talked about iPhone in the early hours of Friday, analysts said that the high pricing could limit the impact of the device in India. Both the companies have announced that consumers will get the lower version of the iPhone 3G at Rs 31,000 and the higher version with more memory is priced at Rs 36,100.

Mr Naveen Mishra, Analyst, Communications Research, IDC India, said “iPhone’s limited availability through a binding service contract with Vodafone/Airtel and its premium pricing are likely to restrict market penetration in the near term. This could be similar to the experience that RIM faced when it launched BlackBerry devices exclusively with Airtel.”

Globally, iPhone costs between $199 (around Rs 8,000) and $299 (Rs 12,000) depending on the model.

In some countries, operators are offering iPhone bundled with a connection for an initial cost of just €1 (Rs 65) and a monthly rental of around €70 (Rs 4,500). In Japan, for example, iPhones are available for a monthly fee of just Rs 1,100.

However, Airtel said the market conditions in India do not allow for handset subsidy.

“We believe that the iPhone is competitively priced with the other high-end smartphones available in India,” said Mr Sanjay Kapoor, President, Bharti Airtel.

Meanwhile, Airtel on Thursday spelt out its go-to-market strategy for the iPhone. Airtel users can purchase the iPhone from Friday across 65 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.

Some of these cities will also have midnight stores to cater to the early birds. The 16GB phone will be available in two colours - Black and White. Airtel will be bundling data plans with the iPhone. “Our research shows that average data usage from the customers is approx 110 MB/month. We expect to go up to 250 MB/month from iPhone user, thereby enhancing data usage. We will be having an attractive bolt-on data plan, offering free 500 MB a month, for the first 12 months for all iPhone users,” Mr Kapoor said.

Over 2 lakh customers have pre-registered with Airtel though all of them may not finally buy the product. About 52 per cent of the demand is from the 6 Metro towns. The operator has conducted special training programmes for handling iPhone customers.

“To deliver world class experience in Airtel stores, we have extensively trained more than 3,000 people in sales and service of the device. The training has been conducted in 41 towns in more than 200 batches. The training module consisted of 5 days training for service and 2 days for sales,” Mr Kapoor said.

More Stories on : New Products & Services | Telecommunications | Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd

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