iPhone 3G pre-release buzz high in India

 The signs are pretty good for Apple’s iPhone 3G launch in India. As far as we can tell, there’s a whole bunch of excitement among India’s switched-on, well-educated tech savvy gadget geeks…

See – what we’re reading right now from EETimes describes a lot of excitement there right now, as launch day clicks ever closer as the tock ticks to August 22.

Airtel and Vodaphone will be offering the in-demand device – three million of which have already been sold worldwide – in India. "Vodaphone is accepting iPhone 3G orders via SMS messages, but has also said nothing about the cost of the new phone or cancellation policies."

What we read about then is a huge big grey market for iPhone non-3G, which sets punters back around $299…but there appears to be some, erm, anticipation, as to how much the iPhone will cost…

"Here in India, cellphones have become status symbols. Whether you use all the features or merely receive voice calls, it doesn’t really matter," said Chiranjeev Shenoy, an executive at a multinational company, adding, "$600 is too high a price to pay, around $300 is a good price" for a new iPhone.

Oops, one snag, there’s no 3G in India yet, and GPS isn’t truly "there" yet… but we are interested in the long tail to the anticipative iPhone article…"There are few reliable statistics on the number of iPhones in India. Estimates range from 100,000 to 500,000."

Now, if only there were a smaller, perhaps less well-featured model that perhaps more people in the world’s growth markets could afford.