This is the week of the geeks, as the Apple iPhone finally made entry into the Indian market amidst fanfare.

Both
the official Indian operators for the phone Bharti Airtel and Vodafone
Essar rolled out the much-awaited phone at midnight across eight cities.

But
the response was far away from that was seen in international markets
where iPhone buffs queued up the whole night to have their coveted
smartphone. Only a few people reached to grab their iPhone on the
midnight of Thursday.

The reason was clear that the majority
of people think that iPhone is out of the reach of their pockets. In
India, iPhone is available at a price of Rs 31,000 for the 8 GB
version, while the 16 GB version costs Rs 36,100.

Available in
2 different colors including Black and White, the 16GB iPhone version
with fast 3G wireless technology features maps along with GPS, back up
enterprise features such as Microsoft Exchange, and the new Application
Store, it coalesces three products in one, a revolutionary phone, a
widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML mail
and full web browsing.

More than 200,000 users had registered
their names with Airtel for the iPhone before its launching. The iphone
experienced a star studded launching ceremony with Vodafone Essar in
Jaipur having Maharaja of Jaipur, Bhawani Singh as its first buyer,
Nishant Arya, owner of automotive component JBM Group the first
purchaser in New Delhi, and Baichung Bhutia, football captain, being
first in Kolkata. Kannada superstar Puneet Rajkumar launched the iPhone
for Airtel in Karnataka.

In spite of the hoopla the purchase of
iPhone was imperfect and the main reason behind this could be non
availability of 3G network in the Indian market, and higher cost.
 
The
same iPhone is much cheaper in US, where it was introduced in June
2007, and it won the hearts of the customers at once. However, the same
Apple iPhone 3G, which was launched on the midnight of Thursday by
Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, received a Luke warm response.

According to analysts, iPhone may sell about 100,000-200,000 units in India during the recent year (2008).

The iPhone will compete with Nokia`s N and E series, HTC phones and BlackBerry.