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 Reminiscent of the craze that follows the release of Harry Potter
books, crowds lined up outside a Gurgaon mall and a few shops in Delhi to pick
up the latest Apple iPhone that went on sale at midnight on Thursday in India.
And no one was daunted by the Rs 30,000-plus price.
The Apple iPhone
3G (third generation) was launched across India by telecom majors Bharti Airtel
and Vodafone.
Swati, a college student, was the first one to pick up
an iPhone at Gurgaon's Sahara Mall. Swati was waiting at the Sahara Mall from 7
pm The phone was handed over to her by Sanjay Kapoor, president of Bharti Mobile
Services.
The iPhone is priced at Rs 31,000 for 8GB and Rs 36,100
for 16GB of memory space.
The Phones are being given on first come
first serve basis.
Vodafone was selling its phones at 11 stores
across Delhi, while Bharti was selling it only at the Shahara
Mall.
The Vodafone
outlet in Delhi's Connaught Place had five people, including a school boy,
waiting to pick up the latest gadget.
Rudra Khurana, 14, a student of
Modern School, was one of the buyers of the iPhone 3G. He went for the expensive
version at Rs 36,000.
"This is the coolest and best," said an excited
Rudra, clutching his phone.
"The best thing is that new features are
added to it, and it also has a 16 GB iPod," he said.
Aditya Malik
whooped with excitement after he bought his iPhone.
"I'm excited because I
have got an Apple iPhone. I am not bothered about the price. Good things come at
a price," Malik told reporters.
"I have been waiting for a year to
buy one. Last year I missed buying the iPhone 2G, which was launched June 5, as
I left for the US on June 3. Now I am very happy to have got the latest one," he
said.
Nishant Arya, 22, a businessman, was equally happy though he
has the earlier versions of the iPhone. "I already have five iPhones. This is
the sixth. I bought it because my family wanted it. The earlier phones were 2G,
this is 3G."
Bharti Airtel said the Apple iPhone will be launched
across six cities in the country.
Rival Vodafone, the other
authorised service provider for Apple in India, also launched the gadget at the
same time.
The phone was sold at Hyderabad and Bangalore besides the
four metropolitan cities and will be later introduced in 65
cities.
The iPhone are priced at Rs 31,000 for 8GB and Rs 36,100 for
16GB of memory space.
Airtel has received 200,000 pre-bookings for
the phone since the process had started about two months back, said Airtel
president (mobility) Sanjay Kapoor.
The phone comes locked to the
service provider, which means a user cannot switch his or her operator while
using an iPhone.
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