Mobile phone carriers Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Aircel Ltd. on Friday brought Indian gadget freaks the Apple iPhone 4—almost a year after it was first released in the United States and at over three times the price. Gaurav Makhija, a manager at a Bharti Airtel store in New Delhi’s Connaught Place commercial area told India Real Time that the iPhone that was launched in 35 cities across the country today.
“The slimmest smartphone has already become talk of the town and customers have shown incredible interest,” said Mr. Makhija, adding that the company received booking orders for at 50 iPhones this month. Available in white and black, both Airtel and Aircel are charging 34,500 rupees ($763) for the version that comes with 16 gigabytes of memory and 40,900 rupees for the model with 32 GB inbuilt memory.
The Airtel manager said the company is offering special deals to iPhone purchasers on talk time and Internet use for two years to reduce the pinch of buying the phone. Forty two-year old Puneet Nigam, who works with U.S.-based Carpenter Technology Corporation, was one of the first people to buy the phone from the Connaught Place store.