Now, I am giving second thought to iPhone as it is available with EMI option as well. Saw this info on Airtel site (http://www.airtel.in/iphone3g)

Hitesh

(A) Network Interface Card (NIC) : For internet speed up to 144 Kbps.

(B) EVDO Card : Internet speed up to 2.4 Mbps*

Can’t get enough of the IPhone so I have no qualms with more posts…keep at it!

My 2 pennies/cents/paisae….

Will it impact Nokia and RIM?

Sure will, not Nokia so much in the short term but in the longer term it will. As for RIM, they will feel the impact within three months of the 3G iphone launch.

You commented that RIMM’s consumer play may be impacted…that now makes up 50% of their unit sales!
If there is even a 10% impact on that part of their business, thats going to be noticed…and then there is price competition. RIMM enjoys high margins, say good by to those across the full 50% of unit sales to the consumer play.

Then we should all remember that, this is the tip of the ice burg…yeah RIM is coming out with their iphone killer and so is Nokia, HTC, Samsung, LG…and hey lets not forget…PALM!

Then there is clincher…the dream phone…Android….Google…Schmidt…free push email…their push into the enterprise market with apps and all….plus I think we can all recall, Schmidt saying phones should be free (obviously supported by ad or other revenue)…thats not going to help RIM, Apple or any of the hardware players…it will come down to user experience with content/application access and usability…Apples in the lead and copying hardware is easier…the apps and content side…no one has hacked the ipod market yet!

Does not look good for RIM…Nokia is large enough and has enough experience to get past this, plus they address a larger spread of market and they have been in this game with constant pressure on margins for so long.

The whole game changes from this point in. Price is critical to all this and Apple has addressed this…in the US anyway!

Who losses?…its all up for grabs I think…talking about smart phones is redundant I believe….what’s a smart phone? Except for the bottom most part of the market (may be highest volume sales due to developing market)..all phones today are pretty smart!

The cost to build these so call smart phones will only get cheaper.
Friend from India just returned with a 3G phone from India (made in china – TC something or rather) with dual sim, 3G, Bluetooth, Wifi, TV/FM receiver, email, touch screen, etc etc…for outright cost of US $110. Its no real competition to iPhone, Blackberry just yet, buts its a solid proposition for 100 dollars…its their implementation of software that needs addressing.

I would be worried being long on RIMM….I must say I have a short position on them!

What’s more what Apple is doing is sucking away Nokia’s profit share. Nokia MUST be making more on a $500 N96 than a $100 generic s60 device. Nokia will move volume, but lose the high end to Apple.

As for competition, i expect RIM’s growth or profit(if they sell of $50 a piece) to vaporize in the next 1-2 years. It will be very hard for them to recover from the missing mobile browser and better screen size. Even if they deliver a better browser of sorts later this year, getting started with developer traction grinds will be 1 year late. Not sure how many developers would be able to split their resources between developing for apple, google, mozilla, msft, opera, and finally RIM.