After months of speculation, Airtel released the official figures. Airtel will be start selling the iPhone 3GS from March 26th at Airtel stores throughout India.
Airtel iPhone 3GS Prices :
16GB version will cost Rs 35,500 32GB version will cost Rs 41,500
Also once you activate your iPhone 3GS, Airtel will give a 500 MB of free data transfer per month for a year from the date of activation.
Sadly iPhone 3G prices were not affected at all, and it will available at its original price tag only. To be honest Apple doesn’t seem to have learnt anything from the iPhone sales debacle in India, also Airtel seem to having no interest in offering some good offers to attract customers toward 3GS. Same old strategy, I wonder whatever happened to Vodafone, which was other official provider for iPhone 3G. Something cooking there .
Finally Airtel is gearing up to release iPhone 3GS in India. In a press release, Airtel posted that they have reached an agreement with Apple to release the iPhone 3GS in India. No word on the price yet, but they have activated the Airtel iPhone 3GS URL .
Following is the part of press release from Airtel website :
Bharti Airtel and Apple to Bring iPhone 3GS to India
New Delhi, March 19, 2010 : Bharti Airtel and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3GS, the fastest most powerful iPhone yet, to India in the coming months. For information please visit www.airtel.in/iphone3gs. For more information on iPhone, please visit www.apple.com/iphone .
Full press release can be found at following URL. Will be calling up few airtel office, to see if they any updates on prices.
Well I am not saying it, apparently this info is from mobile phone retailer univercell who have a pretty decent presence in south India. You can check their iPhone 3GS price listing at Link . I am not sure from where they are getting the price details but it sure looks pretty unbelievable and absurd. Lets just hope this turns out be a wrong calculation.
Another delay in the making. India telecom authorities has delayed the much awaited 3g auction to Jan 2010. To be honest, i am not sure whether to believe these dates as well, but lets just hope it works out this time. BSNL and MTNL are already playing with 3G for long, and it will give a chance to private players from India and abroad to start their 3g services in India.
I was wondering that among the thousands of apps in app store, what are the apps specifically built for iPhone owners in India. So, here is the list of the apps which I found out to be filling up the criteria, please feel free to add apps names through comments, I will update the post accordingly.
Free app and ruling among the most downloaded apps in India for obvious reasons. App description :
Hanuman Chalisa is the written hymns of Goswami Tulsidas which praises Lord Hanuman who is known as a symbol of auspiciousness. It is recited as a prayer everyday or every week by many followers and has gained enormous popularity among the many Hindus across the world.
The application features in English, Hindi and Gujarati, including remarkable graphics of Hanuman and is easy to use – allowing you to scroll the text at your own pace.
Another neat app, targeting people interested in bollywood songs. Its a paid app and sells for $2.99. There is also a web app for the same and you can listen the songs using the url : m.dhingana.com. The web app link works for all smartphones and is not just limited to iPhone. So if you have something like E71, you can enjoy the web app as well.
Features of the app
Discover & listen great music using your iPhone on EDGE / 3G or Wifi networks
Listen to songs in the background and access other applications while you listen to songs (only on Web App)
Easily play “Top Songs” songs from all the genres from Dhingana.
Access all the public playlists created by other users
Login and access your own public and private playlists
Search for any song, album or playlists by actor, year, singer, director or names
Listen to music while you drive your car, or when you are on vacation or anywhere from your iPhone
Even though end of the year is coming but still this app is going strong. Its a paid app and costs $0.99. It gives all the events, festivals happening in current year for many religions.
App Description :
You’re interested to know which festivals will come in the next days or months? You want to know when the next purnima will rise in the sky? You want to know the dates of Diwali for this year?
Then you just need our panchang 2009. Very easy to use, you have 2009 details at the tip of your finger. All the events happening in India, for Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and civil life.
Nearly all the events and festivals are illustrated with a photo: Nearly 340 hundred photos.
IndiaBullion is another paid app which gives you updates on India commodity market. Costs around $0.99 and its a worth the money as I have read reviews about it.
App Description :
With the IndiaBullion iPhone App, you can stay connected to the Indian Equity markets and Bullion trade at all times! IndiaBullion gives you the latest and periodic updates on the happenings of the Indian commodities market – the MCX, the Equities and the Bullion trading market. You can make last minute changes to your investment plans and predict how your assets are performing based on these vital alerts. Get this App and stay apprised of your investments!.
Again a free app which is being downloaded significantly from app store. Given the importance(religious aspect as well) of the baby names in Indian culture, this app comes with baby names along with their meanings.
Hindi Email Keyboard is another nifty app by which you can write emails in hindi. Addition to that there is option available to change the colors and size of the font, to make your email more interesting. Its a paid app and costs $0.99.
This app gives you access to the Galatta magazine on your iPhone, means all the south indian movies gossip and news right into your pocket for free. Although as per description in app store, its original price was about $11.99 and currently its been given out for free as part of promotion.
App Description :
Galatta Cinema magazine is the largest circulating English Cinema Magazine in India for South Indian movies. It offers a complete picture of the movie industry in the 4 southern states of India – an urban, interesting , full-colour, glossy and exciting read any way you look at it.Galatta Cinema assures iPhone rich reading experience of all its 100+ pages in high fidelity that can be viewed anywhere in the planet where you read the replica of the latest print version of the magazine that is on the stands.
Indian Curry (Non Veg) gives a recipes of popular dishes(including Butter Chicken ). Its a paid app and costs $0.99.
App Description :
Here is a collection of most popular Indian Recipes (Non Vegetarian). These are easy to cook and don’t need any special cooking expertise. Give a big Christmas or New Year surprise to your partner or friends with your newfound cooking talent of Indian curries. Enjoy !!
This application consists mouth watering recipes of following Indian non veg dishes :
- Bengali Fish Curry
- Butter Chicken
- Chicken Malai Kebabs
- Chicken Tikka Masala
- Fish Masala
- Goan Fish Curry
- Hot And Sour Shrimps
- Kashmiri Lamb
- Lemon Garlic Chicken
- Masala Crab Curry
- Masala Lobster
- Masala Prawns
- Mutton Curry
- Mutton Kadai
- Prawn Tikka
- Tandoori Chicken
There is also a veg version of the app which can be found at the iTunes Link.
India News updates on the go. Free app, does it works pretty good. I should add there are pretty good amount of iPhone apps related to India news.
That’s all for now but please be noted that its a on going project and I will be adding more apps in this list in the future. Again if you have some app in mind, please do mention about it through comments. Thanks.
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). Its a paid app and costs $0.99. 
