Steve Jobs Short Shifted Indian Consumers, Indian Consumers Returned The Favor

I am rather pleased to report that Apple’s iPhone launch in India was a dismal failure. I was aghast in August this year when Apple (and its cohorts Vodaphone & Airtel) decided to swindle Indian customer by charging over 400% premium over US store price. At that time I advised people to wait till the price drops. Frankly I felt betrayed by Steve Jobs because he promised $199 price globally in his keynote.

He brought a nice product to a economically struggling country and decides to price it over 400% than USA! Not only that the phone was still locked to either Vodaphone or Airtel and for an equivalent period of US. Anyway I am happy that Indian consumers returned the favor by giving iPhone & Steve Jobs a cold shoulder, a perfect example of quid pro quo.

The Inquirer reports that analysts estimate just 11,000 have been sold in the whole of India with over 1.2 billion people. To put that in perspective, the downtown San Francisco Apple store would sell about 11,000 iPhones in a week.

To put the numbers in another perspective Reuters reports that India added a record 7.7 million mobile users in October just to its GSM-based networks, according to the Cellular Operators’ Association of India. Total GSM mobile users at the end of October numbered 241.4 million, up 3.3 percent from 233.7 million in September. The number does not include India’s CDMA mobile users. At the end of September, number two network Reliance Communications, which is CDMA-based, had 56.1 million users.

It is mind-boggling to imagine which genius can came up with such an insulting pricing for India. You can tell I am still peeved at Apple for short shifting India. I would go for a Nokia N series any day over iPhone, thank you very much. Not to mention Apple’s decision to stick to largely forgotten language Objective C, instead of adopting J2ME / MIDP spec as have majority of cell phone providers worldwide. Frankly when I look at Apple, despite all its innovativeness, it is still a small version of Microsoft in my eyes.