India

Apple just published a press release that confirms the new iPad will launch in 12 additional countries Friday, April 20. Along with the 12 countries listed below, Apple confirmed an April 27 international launch date for nine more countries:

In addition to South Korea, the new iPad also will be available beginning on Friday, April 20 in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. Beginning on Friday, April 27, the new iPad will be available in Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

Go past the break for the full press release.

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Apple’s Chief Information Officer Niall O’Connor visited Bangalore in January, according to The Economic Times, and the senior officials at technology firms Infosys and Wipro made sure he received the full-treatment upon landing in India.

Apple is supposedly looking to “quadruple the amount it spends in India, making it all the more covetous for Infosys and Wipro.” The CIO will decide which Indian companies get software outsourcing orders and maintenance work worth about $100 million USD (490 crore), which is roughly 20 percent of the Cupertino, Calif.-based Company’s total global outsourcing spending.

O’Connor started with Apple in 1991 and took the reigns as CIO in 1997. Two of his primary achievements include the global deployment of SAP software and the development of a full-suite of retail systems for Apple…

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Orkut, a Google-owned social network, has had little luck challenging MySpace, hi5, Tagged or Facebook —the undisputed social networking leader (some people even liken Orkut to a poor man’s Facebook). Nevertheless, Orkut is still popular in India and Brazil, where more than 80 percent of its 66 million active users come from, as of October 2011. Today, the search company released a native Orkut client for iPhone. It is available free of charge on the App Store and comes with the usual assortment of features, ranging from updating your status and checking your scraps and messages to browsing your friends’ profiles and uploading photographs. It is interesting that Google chose to release the app just as Facebook has finally managed to beat Orkut in Brazil, per latest comScore metrics.

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Unlocked iPhone 4S is priced out of reach of average folks in India.

Currently available in 44 countries, Apple’s iPhone 4S is patiently awaited in 26 additional territories as Apple makes good on its promise to have the device available in over 70 markets and on 100 carriers before end of the year. iPhone 4S has been well received in Japan and Singapore and pre-orders sold out in Hong Kong in 10 minutes, but reportedly not so much in South Korea…
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We haven’t gotten official word on this but the Economic Times of India is reporting that Apple changed its return policy on Apps from minutes to 7 days.  We reported earlier this month that Taiwan gave both Apple and Google two weeks to comply withits consumer protection mandate.

An official said the lack of a return and refund mechanism violated the Consumer Protection Act. In an example of the problem the city government is trying to prevent, Yeh cited a case of software bought on Apple Store on Thursday that did not work, but left the buyer without recourse.

It appears that Apple has complied (Google, less so):
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