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Nokia has announced a new Symbian S60 powered smart phone the Nokia 6730. Sadly this phone will only be available to Vodafone customers all over the world. The phone features a built-in GPS, A-GPS support, 48MB internal memory, microSD card support, Radio, Symbian S60 3rd Edition UI, no Wi-Fi. The phone also has dual-band UMTS with HSDPA and HSUPA support. The phone will go onto retail shelves in June 2009. [via]

Recently, the Vodafone advertisements have taken the Indian TV audience by storm. These advertisements, created by O&M feature characters called Zoo Zoo and they tell you all the Vodafone mobile services that are available in a very humorous way. Thought these ads look like animation, they are actually not. Check out the all the Zoo Zoo ads from Vodafone below.

You bet they look like animation, but you will be surprised that, its not animation. Now check out the video below, to see how these ads were made.

Check out these ZooZoo Avatars, Smiley Faces & Logos courtesy DesiColors.

Vodafone finally launched the Blackberry Storm in India yesterday. Here are two videos that show preview of the Blackberry Storm on Vodafone from ePrice.

With the news of Vodafone bringing the much awaited Blackberry touch screen, the Storm, confirmed long time back, the operator finally launched the phone in India for Rs. 27,990. The wait is over for all Blackberry lovers who were waiting for this touch screen phone. When this phone was launched by RIM, everybody was making a hue and cry about it being a iPhone killer but let me tell you this phone, though good, is no where an iPhone killer man. The phone will be available to all Vodafone customer from Jan 15th. To get its customers acquainted with this handset, Vodafone will be opening 150 experience zones across the country in their own as well as modern mobile phone outlets, may be like Mobile Store. So what is this concept of experience zone, its like you can go there and handle a live phone and actually experience how the phone will actually function if you buy one. This is a new concept that is rapidly being adopted by mobile phone companies and operators pioneer being Nokia's Experience stores. Vodafone must have been really disappointed with the response it got when iPhone 3G came on Vodafone's network. May be experience zone is part of their strategy where they educate customers about the phone and then these people are more likely to buy the phone. Anyway, coming back to the Storm, its sports an impressive 3.25 inch high resolution clickable touch screen with feedback, 3.5mm standard headphone jack, 1GB on board memory expandable to 16GB with microSD/SDHD card, built-in accelerometer. You will also get lot of cool on-board applications that are built for the Storm like Facebook, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Flickr Uploader and you can also edit your Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Blackberry Strom seems to be promising handset. Blackberry in India has always been looked as a handset for the corporate or business people. As Strom has lot of multimedia capabilities, is this outlook of people bound to change? Till date Blackberry is considered to be a handset of e-mail addicts and not mobile Internet addicts. What do you think? Let your thoughts pour in.

Indian mobile services provider, BSNL would the first to launch its 3G services in India in the month of December 2008. According to some reports and NAMP that came out in the second week of September, BSNL was supposed to launch the 3G iPhone along with the launch of 3G services. The 3G iPhone has really not picked up in the Indian market mainly because of its high-pricing and non-availability of the 3G spectrum and the news of BSNL bringing iPhone on its 3G spectrum is turning out to be false because as of now, Apple has no intentions of tying up with BSNL for the launch of its 3G iPhone on BSNL's 3G services. Apple has already bent its rule of sticking to single player for a country by going ahead in India with AirTel and Vodafone. As we all know what fate the 3G iPhone met in India, I mean people are buying it but it never gained speed in the lucrative Indian mobile phone market. The 3G iPhone mania is slowly dying down in India and now people are looking forward to upcoming phones like the Nokia Tube, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Storm, Samsung Omnia etc. With the absence of 3G iPhone in its portfolio, BSNL will have tough time luring users towards it 3G services.

The much awaited iPhone 3G was launched in India on August 22nd and the bad days of Apple, Vodafone and AirTel started on the same day. Price of the iPhone 3G was and is one of the biggest factor that had a negative impact on the iPhone launch and the sentiments of the Indian mobile phone user. Non-availability of 3G spectrum, other limitations of the iPhone 3G were some of the other factors that fueled the downtrend of the iPhone 3G in the Indian market. What was Apple thinking when they came up with this kind of pricing for the iPhone. AirTel and Vodafone sold just 1500 iPhones in first two weeks of the launch. This figure is really embarrassing for  a company like Apple who had broke all records with the US launch of the 3G iPhone. iPhone 3G's dismal performance in the Indian market has led these things, which nobody would have imagined:

• AirTel and Vodafone selling the iPhone 3G on EMI
• Vodafone lowering down the price of 3G iPhone by 1500 bucks in just one month of its launch
• AirTel is also rumored to lower the price of the 3G iPhone
• AirTel will not air any more ads on the Television now and they have told their media agencies not to do anything for atleast coming three months

Just imagine the situation if Apple would have launched the iPhone for 20,000, rest everything would have been history. Anyway, now the damage is already done but one thing is sure that Apple has failed to crack the most lucrative mobile phone market in the world and that is the fact.

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Both, AirTel and Vodafone launched the Apple iPhone 3G in much pomp and show in India on August 22nd 2008. The launch was a flop given the high price factor attached to the iPhone 3G. People were waiting for it but the high price was a dampener and people were pretty unhappy. But the only guys who are happy with the iPhone's official "high" price are the grey marketers. According to Economic Times, grey marketers would be selling the iPhone 3G at a price point of 20,000 to 22,000, which is pretty much affordable for Indians and they feel that the official price will drive people to them for buying the new 3G iPhone. I seriously fail to understand what AirTel and Vodafone were thinking when they fixed the price of the 3G iPhone for the Indian market. Didn't you guys EVER thought of grey market's existence in India. Who is to Blame???

Today has been a bit disappointing day for people in India who were eagerly waiting for the iPhone 3G to be launched in India. Today both, Vodafone and AirTel have come out their pricing strategies for the new iPhone, which will be made available to Indians on August 22nd 2008. Both, Vodafone and AirTel are charging Rs. 31,000 and Rs. 36,000 for 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3G respectively. This price is beyond what, people had earlier anticipated for the iPhone 3G. On the top of that, the iPhone 3G that will be sold by Vodafone will be 3G disabled. You have to pay Rs. 10,000 to Vodafone and Rs. 5,000 to AirTel as a booking amount. Just imagine, you pay so much money and then you have to stick to that service provider, the iPhone functions are not that great if you look at it from a mobile phone perspective but yeah, its multi-touch interface is freaking best out there. Many of my friends who were eagerly waiting for the iPhone are a bit disappointed by the pricing that has come out. Many have changed their plans to go for the iPhone and are thinking of spending money on a high-end phone from Nokia or Sony Ericsson that give more functionality. So what do you think would there be as many takers for the new iPhone 3G as the providers would have anticipated earlier?? By the way tomorrow there is a iPhone launch even in the Bangalore HQ of AirTel. Industry experts are saying that in India, 100,000 iPhones will be sold in the coming 12 months, but does this kind of pricing support that forecast. I think the initial hype will push up iPhone sales but then pricing is still a dampener for many and if they don't  bring down the price then, Apple, Vodafone and AirTel would certainly miss their forecasts!!  One good news is that black market guys are working towards cracking the iPhone 3G and they would price it Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 6,000 lower than that of Vodafone and AirTel.