Many expected iphone to become instant hit in every market just like US. But apart from US and few European countries, iphone hasn’t taken off as expected. Even worse, In India it is a total flop show. Indian youngsters are not averse to spending thousands on mobile phones, but they are certainly not dumb either. India is one of the major market for Nokia’s high end phones including N series and E Series. These phones offer almost all the features and functionality, of a mini computer coupled with no restrictions on Network, software or data plans. But with Iphone 3G priced at same price as the top notch N95/N96, its features are not that great to sweep away the Nokia users.
Except the touch screen Iphone 3G falls short in almost every other area for the same price.
Whether it is iphone’s poor 2MP camera vs 5MP carl zeiss optics of Nokia or the battery life or application support. Iphone 3G’s much bloated feature 3G itself cannot be put to test in India, and Nokia has been offering 3G silently in even its basic phones.
Thanks to many complaints from other markets about poor call quality and battery life, many wannabe iphone users simply walked away.There could also another reason unlike other products which primarily launch in US before coming to countries like India, India is the first takeoff pad for most popular mobiles, be it Nokia or Samsung or Sony Ericsson, all have almost 95% of their models launched in India. On the other hand US customers get less than 10% of the models and mostly AT&T and other operators introduce phones which failed in Europe and Asia. The only N Series phone available with AT&T was N75 and which was probably the worst performing N Series device in Europe and India. Same with Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
All in all Apple might have to do much better than hype in markets outside US.