So the “big” news yesterday was the announcement by DiGi that they have reached an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone 3G S in Malaysia, by the first half of this year. The Star reports that the agreement is for three years, which is a very long time, if you ask me, judging by Apple’s rumoured past practices regarding the iPhone – could this mean that the iPhone 4G will be exclusive to DiGi when it appears?
In that same report, the Star says that (emphasis mine):
“The iPhone is sold in 85 countries and has about 25,000 applications that can be downloaded.“
Considering the report was written yesterday, the least the Star could do was to check its facts and figures – the Apple AppStore surpassed the 25,000 applications number a long, long time ago. As of January 2010, it had 133,979 apps available for download, and the number is closer to 150,000 now.
And don’t let the title mislead you – the “price war” being referred to is “price war with contractual commitment“. I doubt Apple would be so silly as to give two levels of pricing to two celcos in the same country. So, everyone is waiting for DiGi to come out with some attractive packages where it will subsidise the price of the iPhone in return for a long term contract – but as I’ve mentioned repeatedly – if you already know what your competition is doing, it’s easy to undercut them, like what DiGi did with their Blackberry BIS package. It’s altogether another matter to be “innovative” and “market leading”.
And as I’ve told people who are willing to listen repeatedly, you do not have to wait for DiGi to offer the iPhone if you want to use the iPhone on DiGi’s network – just get a prepaid Maxis iPhone (it’s not branded Maxis in any way, externally or internally), throw away that RM 8.80 Maxis prepaid SIM pack, insert a DiGi SIM card and you’re good to go – I’ve been doing this since I got my “Maxis” iPhone3GS since last July! Unfortunately there are still a lot of ignorant people out there who think that they have to be tied into Maxis when buying the iPhone. Sigh…I guess companies love to rely on ignorance and stupidity to make money.
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DiGi has put up a page where one can pre-order the iPhone 3GS. Pre-orderers will be given priority over others when the time comes to collect the iPhone. Click here to register your interest – there is no obligation to buy the phone if you pre-order; simply don’t turn up or do anything if you don’t want to!
