Touchy-feely times in mobileland

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: You could call Apple’s iPhone a true star. First came the pomp and show at a gala reception and now it is the turn of hot debates. As Apple junkies and design freaks go gaga over its sleek black design, touchscreen operation and faster Internet, there is no dearth of those doling out a long list of what it lacks. To many, it is a perfect curtain raiser for the launch of 3G services in the country.

Over 2 lakh people pre-booked the phone only with Airtel (the phone is being sold exclusively by Airtel and Vodafone in the country). However, its steep price tag and ‘list of missing features’ are now keeping the interest alive. “At the end of it, the real debate is between fan following and feature objectivity,” sums up Arpita Pal Agrawal, associate director, telecom group, PricewaterhouseCoopers. And she is not alone. Questions are being raised on the product’s steep price and lack of features that rival’s similarly priced products boast of. Airtel has introduced the iPhone at Rs 31,000 for the 8 GB version and Rs 36,000 for the 16 GB version. In order to lure the price-conscious Indians, Vodafone has slashed the prices by Rs 1,500.

Whether the phone generates mega sales for Apple or not, it has generated euphoria around 3G. Having received the green signal from the department of telecom (DoT), 3G services are to be introduced next year. “The iPhone launch has kicked off the process of building a 3G ecosystem that can take off once the 3G services roll out next year,” says Sanjit Chatterjee, global marketing head, Flytxt, a UK-headquartered mobile marketing software firm.

With superior mobile Internet experience, the iPhone’s browser could spur other handset makers to replicate this feature in low-end phones and place the power of mobile Internet at the hands of 300 million mobile users. “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,” Sanjay Gupta, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel. “Suddenly, you could have these mobile users crossing over to the other side of the digital divide,” adds Chatterjee.