Apple iPhone 4 reaches India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Nearly a year after its launch in the foreign markets, Apple's iPhone 4 hit store shelves in India on Friday morning. Mobile phone carriers Airtel and Aircel are the operators who launched the iPhone 4 on May 27..

Airtel's schemes

Mobile services giant Airtel is offering up to 50 per cent savings (per month) in the form of free talk time from Airtel to Airtel, with plans ranging from Rs 600 to Rs 2,000.

A person opting for the Rs 2,000 pack, will save Rs. 1000 a month thus saving Rs 24,000 over a period of two years. In this Airtel is offering 1900 minutes of Airtel to Airtel calls and 1,350 MB of data at 3G speed and also get 2,000 local SMS free. For Rs 600 plan you will get 550 minutes of Airtel to Airtel local calls, 500 local SMS and 300 MB of 3G data. There are 7 plans that Airtel is offering.

Aircel not behind

Aircel has introduced a new pricing model, allowing customers to recover the upfront cost of the smartphone on select plans over 24 months, the company said in a press release.

On the other hand Aircel will charge 34,500 rupees for iPhones with a 16 GB capacity and 40,900 rupees for the 32 GB model, it said.

The iPhone 4 boasts a higher-quality screen and longer battery life than the previous model.

Bharti and Vodafone Essar already sell earlier models of the iPhone in India.

With more than 800 million mobile subscribers, India is the world's second-biggest market for mobile phone services and is also the fastest-growing. But smartphones are estimated to account for just over 5 percent of the mobile handset sales.

Indian carriers have recently started rolling out high-speed third-generation (3G) mobile networks, which is expected to boost sales of smartphones.

(With inputs from Reuters)