May 25: The iPhone 4 — the fourth-generation variant of Apple’s smartphone — is being launched in India on Friday and will be sold through mobile service providers Aircel and Airtel.
For the first time, the mobile service providers are using an innovative hook. They are offering a reverse subsidy plan under which the buyer pays the full cost of the handset upfront and recovers the entire amount over a period of two years through monthly credits on the subscription plans.
Aircel is offering the 16GB model of the iPhone 4 at a price of Rs 34,500 and the 32GB model at Rs 40,900. “We aim to make the iPhone more affordable than ever,” said Aircel director Sandip Das.
The new model of the iPhone — which is popular for its high-speed Internet and mobile software capabilities — will be available under both post-paid and pre-paid subscription plans.
A Bharti Airtel spokesperson said the company would also offer the iPhone 4 under similar schemes and the same price range.
The reverse subsidy strategy has worked well in the West and has been responsible for the terrific sales of the product. In the three months ended March 26 this year, Apple reported worldwide iPhone sales of 18.64 million units, an increase of 113 per cent over the year-ago period.
The big advantage is that the phones will be factory-unlocked. In the West, service providers lock the phone, making it virtually impossible for the subscriber to migrate to another service provider. However, fickle consumers in India may not stand to benefit if they change service providers because they may not be able to port the reverse subsidy as well.
The iPhone 4 will also be available from Apple Authorised Premium Resellers, which are the two Imagine shops at City Centre at Salt Lake and Rajarhat.
Hot Features
The iPhone 4 is in many ways the best iPhone Apple has ever made. The biggest leap forward is the 5 megapixel camera. It has a second 640x480 front facing camera. This is not for still photos but for FaceTime video calls. The rear facing camera offers high quality stills.
The iPhone 4 is powered by a custom-built A4 processor. It has 512MB of RAM. The A4 processor brings more power while consuming less energy.
That, combined, with the iPhone’s larger battery, ensures 40 per cent more talktime than previous models.
The display is stunning because of the high-resolution screen — dubbed Retina Display. It packs four times the pixels (960x640) of previous iPhone displays into the same rectangular area.It is also a perfect companion for those with WiFi-only iPads. The Personal Hotspot feature allows your iPad to connect to the Internet through your own WiFi.
The smartphone comes with iOS 4, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system and has access to the revolutionary App Store which provides access to more than 350,000 apps.
Moneyspinner
The iPhone is the real revenue spinner in Apple’s slate of products. It accounted for $12.3 billion of sales revenue in the three months ended March this year, or 49.8 per cent of Apple’s overall sales of $24.7 billion in the period.
The iPhone 4 was launched in the US, Europe and Japan on June 24 last year at a starting price of $199. It is coming to India almost a year later.
Analysts said Apple seemed to have finally woken up to the importance of India as a potential market for its products. The technology giant has often been accused of treating India as a “dumping ground” for its phones and tablets that are at the tail end of their product cycles.
However, in April, within a little over a month of its US launch, the iPad 2 — Apple’s second-generation tablet PC — was launched in India.
One reason for bringing the iPhone 4 to India now is that several mobile service providers have started offering stress-tested 3G services that ensure high-speed data transfer capabilities.
Aircel — 74 per cent owned by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications, with India's Apollo Hospitals group owning the rest — started providing 3G services in February.
Both Bharti Airtel and Aircel have the spectrum to offer 3G services in 13 of the country’s 22 telecom service areas.
Smartphone sales in India have also soared and Apple sees it as an opportunity to bite into a growing market.
While the groundbreaking iPhone1 was never released in India, the iPhone 3G was released a month after its US launch in July 2008. However, the sales were so sluggish that mobile telephony companies such as Airtel and Vodafone were saddled with huge unsold inventories.
In a recent note, CyberMedia Research estimated sales of nearly 12 million smartphones in India during 2011 — a nearly 100 per cent growth over the previous year.
Smartphones are expected to account for 5.7 per cent of total mobile handset sales in India this year compared with 3.6 per cent last year, CyberMedia Research added.
Earnings of Indian telecom operators have been under pressure over the past few quarters due to intense competition. However, the companies are betting on higher revenue-generating services such as 3G to boost their financials.
Source : telegraphindia
