iPhone's tryst with Indian psychology!

NEW DELHI: At the stroke of midnight, iPhone did finally have the tryst with its destiny in India. But unlike the serpentine queues in the US, the footfall at the stores that were kept open for customers who could not sleep over their desire to hold the device, is not something that the carriers could crow about this morning.

A low-key midnight launch - though the first such launch in India - could not fuel the hype that has somewhat been doused by the price tag attached to Apple’s iconic internet device that also happens to be a phone.

But was a midnight launch a good idea at all? Would more people have showed up if it was unveiled at a more reasonable hour given that no queues were expected outside the stores anyways? Are Indians game for midnight launches? Those questions are best left to the event managers for the two service providers. More important are the issues that are clouding the consumers’ mind.

The price tag has actually left most people wondering why would Apple want to make a ‘premium product’ out of a devise that most discerning Indian consumers would like to be seen with, provided it was priced better. Do volumes matter to Apple at all? “I have a sneaking suspicion that it has a lot to do with the carriers. Apple did not want to go through the normal distribution channels so it selected two carriers for India. But for those two carriers, the handset sale is a one time revenue opportunity since the 3G network is almost a year away. And unlike in the US, they do not have the option of tariff bundles or service charges the way AT&T had in the US,” says Prasanto K Roy is Chief Editor of CyberMedia's Business Publications.