The iPhone is now round the corner in India. Both Bharti and Vodafone will be marketing the phone. That's a clear difference from the United States where only AT&T subscribers can have an iphone. But, hey at Rs 8,000 for a phone, it comes much below the Nokia N series. So expect all and sundry to be carrying an iphone soon. So much for exclusivity.
But, while the iphone comes with a lot of big bang and advertising, Taiwan's ASUS has made a quiet entry with some print advertising to support it. The ASUS PDA phones have been around for a few months. According to Edward Wang, head, mobile communications ASUS Technology: "The Indian PDA market is huge and growing very fast." This year, India will purchase an estimated 350,000 PDA phones. that is expected to hit 600,000 in 2009.
While the current set of PDAs in India are targeted for the male user, ASUS will soon launch PDAs in pink and white for the women users. ASUS is estimated to invest close to Rs 20 crore in India over the next couple of years.
ASUS has seven models and five service centres in India. Wang points out that the real competition for ASUS comes from HTC and iMate. According to him, iphone is a threat but not a huge threat.
But, the real business for ASUS is motherboards. Soon once should hear more of ASUS in India.
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