No. Apple’s new iPhone won’t be launched in India on 11 July, the day when it will be launched in the US. At least, there are no such plans so far. However, Vodafone and Airtel have announced the phone’s launch on their respective networks sometime soon. Again, there are no specific dates. What you can be sure of is that you will get it on a subscription plan that costs more than one for a regular plan.
Illustration by Malay Karmakar / MINT
But, that may not be all. Are you ready to pay an optional $99 (Rs4,257) per annum? Apple.co.in/iphone/getready.html mentions how you should prepare for the launch of the iPhone by migrating all your existing contacts, calendars, and even your personal photos, to specific applications on your PC or Mac, or to popular Web services.
Should you then choose to migrate your data to Apple’s new Me.com site, the Web service will sync your data from any device with any other device, concurrently. That means, a contact in your Outlook Express on Windows, a new calendar entry on your Macbook, or a new email from your iPhone will sync automatically with all the other devices.
The catch? Apple may get to own your data, and charge you an annual $99 to store, use and sync this. Just remember, it is optional.
Apple’s Web-cloud
The new Me.com, dubbed “MobileMe”, provides you with a new Web presence in Apple’s own Web-cloud, for an annual fee. Within two years, you’ll end up paying as much as you did for your iPhone, which comes bundled with a free, 45-day Me.com offer.
You get email, contacts, calendars, galleries and 20GB file-storage. This is also Apple trying really hard to take some market-share away from Google’s services. Except that Google is free, and offers you many more Web services and Web “widgets”, and even Web-based applications such as Google Docs.
MP3 may not be free
Almost everyone’s mobile handset in India contains a growing collection of MP3 music, most of it perhaps freely acquired. This is Apple’s biggest competition to both the venerable iPod, and its profit-making iTunes service. Well, the iPhone is also a full-blown iPod. The other good news is that the iPhone gives you almost DVD-quality playback of films and downloaded high-quality video, should you connect the iPhone to your home TV using the optional connector cable, which costs Rs2,690 plus taxes.
Apple exhorts potential users to start building their digital library exclusively using iTunes, so that Apple can not only sync your collection, but assist in enforcing DRM (Digital Rights Management) where applicable, while encouraging you to consider purchasing music at 99 cents (Rs42.47) per track.