According to livemint.com, a recent change in retail laws that will allow for 100% foreign ownership of single-brands may result in Apple expanding their highly successful retail chain into India. Apple has reportedly been in discussions with the department of industrial policy and promotion for some time and is “keen” to enter the market, but not firm plans or timelines are in place.

“They have not told us how many stores they will open,” the official said. “We have made the policy. The doors are now open.”

Apple Stores in Indian would certainly be a boon for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users in the subcontinent, likely allowing them direct access to all of Apple’s customer services, including the Genius Bar and One-to-One training.

Apple had no comment on the rumors.

Source: livemint.com via Fone Arena via iPhone Hacks

iPad 2 just launched in Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and UAE today and despite Wi-Fi and unlocked 3G units being snuck in from North America and Europe for over a month already, it looks like the crowds are still coming out.

Did you just get your new iPad 2? If so, if you’ve finished unboxing and you’re finally ready to go… you might just be wondering what you need to know and do next?

• iPad Starters Guide: Get unpacked, get set up, get updated, and get all the info you need for your new iPad 2!
• iOS 4.3 walkthrough: Everything you need to know about what’s new in Apple’s latest software
• Top 10 apps for your iPad: From Flipboard to Infinity Blade, productivity to utility, these are the apps and games to check out first.
• Top 5 apps to show off your new iPad 2
• How to transfer data from your original iPad to your new iPad 2
• Tips and How-tos: From beginner to ninja, everything you need to know to get more out of your iPad
• Jailbreak Starters Guide: If you want to go beyond the bounds of Apple and iTunes but aren’t sure how, we explain all the basics and help you get going.
• iPad 2 accessories: Need an extra, cable, charger, headset or anything else to make your iPad 2 perfect?
• iPad Live podcast: Your weekly dose of iPad news, reviews, and how-tos. Join us live on Sunday nights or listen any time you like via iTunes or RSS.

And don’t forget our awesome iPad Forum for extra help and expert advice! We’ve got contests and give-aways, polls and guides, bug fixes and forums, and much, much more. Bookmark TiPb now and come back often, we want to hear from you!

[Thanks for the pic, Berk! Hope you enjoy your new iPad!]

The Wall Street Journal is claiming that Apple is in talks with 2 Indian carriers over a CDMA version of the iPhone. The two carriers in question are Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices. No time frame was mentioned except “near future”.

CDMA iPhones are apparently all the rage lately, especially since Verizon iPhone rumors won’t die. Although GSM may be considered a worldwide standard these days, the CDMA market still caters to around 550 million users. Adding them into Apple’s pool of customers should definitely be something they’re interested in doing. India’s mobile phone market has exploded in recent years. Nearly 20% of mobile phone subscribers are CDMA customers. That averages out to around 130 million CDMA subscribers in India alone. It’s logical Apple would have an interest.

India’s phone market has been a heated competition between top manufacturers like HTC, RIM, and Nokia. Perhaps Apple wants a piece of the CDMA subscriber base to increase their extremely low market share in India. Could all these CDMA iPhone rumors be misplaced or do you think we’ll see a CDMA iPhone sooner rather than later?

[WSJ via AppleInsider]

While it’s easy to think the iPhone 3GS is everywhere now, TiPb still gets email asking when it will be in India, and on the largest carrier in the largest market in the world, China Mobile.

Well Macworld tells us Airtel has finally announced they’ll be bringing the iPhone 3GS to India:

New Delhi, March 19, 2010 : Bharti Airtel and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3GS, the fastest most powerful iPhone yet, to India in the coming months. For information please visit www.airtel.in/iphone3gs. For more information on iPhone, please visit www.apple.com/iphone .

Meanwhile, Financial Times [registration required] reports that China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou is still interested as well, providing Apple addresses their special radio needs:

“including TD-SCDMA is not that hard to do – RIM is doing it”. But he added that Apple had not yet responded to his proposal.

MacRumors points out that while China Mobile is a monster, their 3G customer base remains small, but should grow from 3.4 to 10 million this year.

Either way, these represent two holes in Apple’s iPhone coverage and it’s nice to see at least one of them getting filled.

Back on July 11, the iPhone 3G launched in 22 countries. Along with much fanfare, hippie attention seekers, lines that would stretch out for weeks on end, and constantly crashing servers. But since Apple sold about a million of the hot new handsets that weekend, you just knew they were going to do it again.

“Today” brings phase 2, where 21 more countries are supposed to come online with the iPhone 3G. (Officially Aug. 22nd, which may or may not be “today” to you depending on your timezone). How are things going so far? Reader Anton was gracious enough to send in this report (thanks Anton!):

Now it’s midnight in Estonia and I’m at the iphone launch event. No special frenzy, about 1000 people in one supermarket, a couple of DJs and a lot of light. There’s just two plans offered: us$55 and $89. First one includes 100 minutes, 100 SMS and 100 Mb; the other one – 250 of each. Every extra megabyte will cost $.25 and $.21 respectively. The phone itself is $267/8Gb and $396/16Gb with $55 plan and $149/8Gb and $278/16Gb with $89 plan.

Ouch! When will telcos worldwide realize what Henry Ford did almost 100 years ago. Mass pricing leads to mass adoption which leads to mass profits. Sheesh!

So are you standing in line right this very minute, ready to get your shiny new iPhone today? Is your carrier up? Is iTunes activating? Let us know how things are going!

And if your market still doesn’t have the iPhone 3G, just remember that Apple promised another 30+ countries — a grand total of 70+ — for 2008, which is now set to include Russia via MTS. That pretty much leaves China standing alone as the last major market sans carrier deal… for now.

20 countries launched the iPhone 3G back on July 11 (okay, zut, France straggled a bit), and Apple hopes to launch some 21 more just 6 short weeks later — only minus some iTunes authentication failures and supply shortages, no doubt.

From iLounge, we learn who’s next:

Romania, India, the Philippines, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, four additional countries will see launches. Latvia and Lithuania will see the device launched on TeliaSonera’s LMT and Omnitel services, respectively, while T-Mobile and Orange will launch the iPhone in Slovakia, and SingTel will begin offering the device in Singapore.

This will bring the grand total to some 43, with almost 30 more still slated by close of year, 2008. Looks like Apple may need those 40 million units after all, doesn’t it?

Thanks to eagle-eyed reader Janric for the tip:

Globe’s Head for Consumer Wireless Business Ferdinand Dela Cruz announced today that Globe, SingTel, Bharti Airtel, and Optus have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to the Philippines, Singapore, India, and Australia later this year.

Philippines is new, Singapore is now confirmed, and given that Vodafone has already announced Australia and India, this would make it the second and third confirmed non-exclusive territories after Italy.

Score board says:

Okay folks, who’s next?

Figures. Right after I go to all the trouble of cut and pasting together an April iPhone Risk Roundup, Vodafone goes ahead and announces 10 more countries, more than doubling the amount of countries having, or set to have, the iPhone! Apple Insider goes on locations:

“Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network,” the carrier said in a statement without providing further detail.

A look at our newly overpopulated score board:

Vodofone, of course, owns Verizon in the US, which is rumored to have taken a pass on Apple’s iPhone, leading to the current AT&T exclusivity deal. Back with a vengeance much?

Like the Canadian detail-free announcement from Rogers, it’s also likely these deals will involve the as-yet-unannounced-but-widely-expected 3G iPhone, though given the rest of the world’s 3G-centricity, it certainly should. Also unknown is whether these will be the exclusive deals involving revenue sharing and pressure towards unlimited data plans Apple pioneered with the initial iPhone launch last year.

What do you think?

(PS – Apple, help a blogger out and release more of your little flag circle icons. Those things don’t Photoshop themselves, b’okay?)

Singapore, the Netherlands, and Mexico, and Australia, watch out! Apple Insider is reporting that India has joined the fray for next iPhone launch.

A quick check of the battleground shows:

The rumor is sourced to Indian retail connections with an early September launch data tied in to Vodafone as the exclusive carrier. Pricing may be a steep 27,200 to 28,000 Rupees ($680 to $700) for an 8GB model. (With the beefier 16GB delayed until mid-2009 to “accommodate demand” ?!.

Without a substantial retail presence, Apple may rely on local retailer Reliance Digital to open semi-official iStores.

So the game is heating up! Will India get an early edge? Will one of the other pre-rumored countries still get there first? Or will a surprise entrant swoop in and win it all? Who’s getting the next iPhone? What do you think?

When Steve Jobs took the stage at the iPhone SDK Roadmap event, it was with business eyes fixed squarely on market leader RIM’s Blackberry device:

“Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”

And so is the Indian government it seems! Engadget sums up the current situation, which seems like it couldn’t have been scripted better for Apple if El Jobso himself held the knife… er… pen:

Apparently the Indian government is demanding that RIM either allow it to snoop on its encrypted email service (or worse, drop down to 40-bit encryption), or shut down the entire Indian Blackberry network at the end of the month. That’ll cut off an estimated 400,000 subscribers…

Unlike RIM’s three-tiered true “push” model that routes everything through the NOC, Apple has licensed Microsoft’s competing pseudo-”push” technology, ActiveSync, which relays mail directly between Exchange servers and the iPhone. This would mean that, rather than simply going after a single manufacturer like RIM to snoop on every user’s email, a government would have to go after every single Exchange server in every single business in the country — a potentially much more complicated and difficult process.

Is this a tempest in a teapot, or should Indian Crackberry addicts be worried? Would government “spying” on email lead you away from a Blackberry and towards an iPhone or even (merciful Buddha) a WinMob device? (Treo bone for completeness).

UPDATE (via Engadget):

Today the Indian government ruled out banning the BlackBerry service. Instead, the government will continue working with the Telecom Commission on security matters