The much awaited iPhone 3Gs launched in India today. I had always felt that Apple does not understand the potential of the Indian market and the launch today further reinforced that idea.

iPhone is being offered in India only in the locked variant by 2 different carriers AirTel and Vodafone. There has been no plans to launch the unlocked variant. The pricing has however got me stunned.

A locked iPhone is being sold at prices which are same as the unlocked phones sold in other parts of the world. The flagship mobile from Apple comes with a price tag of Rs. 35,500 for 16GB and Rs. 41,500 for 32 GB variants. Apple has cleverly mentioned that any iPhones which are jailbroken would be not covered under warranty.

I think this is a fundamental mistake. Apple does not provide direct support in India. It is provided through Apple Authorized Service Providers. The support quality is very patchy and questionable. Most of the times, I have needed support for my Apple Macbook was because of a hardware issue. The one stop answer for all software issue was to reinstall the OS which was definitely not an option for me. Apple iPhone is not a phone for the masses. The people who use iPhones are mostly technically sound and know what they are doing. If things turn out where a customer requires help from the AASPs, most of the times the phone is dead and they do not have a way to find out whether it has been jailbroken or not.

One of my theories why the prices of iPhone are skyrocketing in India is because of the excessive greed of the service providers. It has boomeranged earlier when iPhone 3G sales was a disaster. Now whether history will repeat itself or not, only time will tell.

On a personal note, I firmly believe that the only product *worth* buying from Apple are the Macbook Pros.