India picks up HTC Touch Diamond, 3G not included
HTC's leaving no stone unturned in making sure that its Touch Diamond reaches a global audience, and Bharti Airtel is all lined up to be the exclusive provider of the hottest thing going for Windows Mobile 6.1 (for the moment, anyway) in India. HTC chief Peter Chou himself was on hand for the announcement, saying that he'd like to sell 50,000 Touch Diamonds in India this year -- a reasonable goal, perhaps, though our excitement's tempered a bit by the fact that the local flavor of the device will apparently lack any sort of 3G radio. Pricing comes in at 27,500 rupees (about $642), so if you can bear the tortoise-like browsing on the road, this should end up being one of the best VGA values on the market.[Via Cellpassion]
Filed under: Handsets, HTC, Windows Mobile, GSM, EDGE
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Indie @ May 23rd 2008 11:17AM
India won't have 3g for next 2 years. So it doesn't matter much. Unless the user roams internationally. Price will be a major deterrent. N95 8GB is priced around 26,000 Rupees. Even Iphone is available unofficially around 24,000 Rupees.
Chris Ziegler @ May 23rd 2008 11:37AM
Still would've been nice for international 3G roaming though, no?
Gaines @ May 27th 2008 10:34AM
Not sure about the price, but it does appear to be an amazing phone.
http://www.HTCTouchDiamond.com
mnogsd @ May 23rd 2008 12:30PM
no the iphone is availible fo 30,000 rupees
http://etiole.com
Juice @ May 23rd 2008 12:38PM
Half the time my ATT 3G connection is just as slow as my EDGE connection anyway. Bull$hit.
Abhishek @ May 23rd 2008 12:42PM
Actually...realizing India's demographic who will get this phone...the business owners/executives will likely give this a skip.
This is more of an attraction for the fashion forward Gen-Y...especially those young, rich kids who can afford these. Though 50,000 does seem a large number. Especially with the iphone arriving, and the latest nokia's and SE's ALREADY established in the market.
Juice @ May 23rd 2008 2:40PM
Isn't there like a billion people in India. You mean HTC can't get 50,000 of them...
Mark @ May 24th 2008 3:23PM
There's a billion people in India, but most of them can't afford mobile phones, let alone HTC Touch Diamonds. Also, Nokia has a solid lock on this market. People naturally go to the most expensive nokia to show that they've arrived, which is what is boosting Symbian numbers compared to Windows Mobile.
Airtel has a decent EDGE network, but its really slow browsing and is crippled like T-Mobile's network. I'm guessing there are backhaul constraints rather than air interface constraints.
Corleno @ May 23rd 2008 2:01PM
lol iv 50,000 friends waiting to grab this baby already :P
so peter chou needn't worry
so without 3g is 27,500 inr
and with 3g is 34,000 inr
so thats a huge sum difference
i guess ill go for the non-3g cause there ain't no 3g in here anyway
Im sure that wouldn't affect my wi-fi speed right ???
Abhishek @ May 23rd 2008 2:57PM
@Juice
Highly unlikely!!
Indians are trend-followers, not trend setters. Iphone, Nokia/SE , and then any phone with a qwerty keyboard. The HTC will get the left over market...not the "in" market.
If HTC wants to get a piece of the Indian telecommunications industry pie, it needs to up it's marketing drastically.
And it'll probably break even if the marketing works, and it reaches it's intial 50,000 sales number. I doubt there's much market for the HTC touch diamond.
narendra.s.v @ May 29th 2008 7:56AM
well well indians are so developing now even the high school students have there own mobile and including me having a HTC Touch(likely to buy this) And in our small town(tirupathi) it self there are some 20 HTC Touch piece and around a 10 iphone so if u compare with big cities then reaching 50,000 is not a big deal!!!!!