iPhone 5 Release Date: One Region Where No One Cares About the New iPhone

By Luiza Oleszczuk, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, October 04, 2011

As the new iPhone 5 is revealed to the public today in California, there is one market where the new device is likely not to be very popular. Even though iPhone fans in most regions of the world are unable to contain their excitement, Apple is actually having trouble selling its trademark phones in India.

The world’s most celebrated producer of consumer electronics is having trouble selling iPhones in the South Asian country, where BlackBerrys still prevail, reported The Times of India.

India is a market with 602 million active subscribers, according to the paper. But Apple ships fewer handsets to this second-largest mobile-phone market in the world than to Norway.

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The company executed only some 2.6 percent of India’s smartphone shipments in the quarter that ended on June 30; it is behind Research In Motion (15 percent of shipments), Samsung Electronics (21 percent of shipments) and Nokia’s (46 percent of shipments).

Nokia and RIM (which entered the market in 2004) are luckiest in that market - the smartphone shipments for these two companies are expected to grow by almost 70 percent a year until 2015.

RIM reportedly plans to extend its lead over Apple after expanding distribution to 80 cities.

The main reason, according to experts, for iPhones not being popular is that the 3G network is not yet well established in India, where most phones still operate on 2G.

Meanwhile, in California the Tuesday Apple press conference is expected to reveal the new phone’s key features. It is expected to be hosted by new Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Some analysts suggest that the iPhone 5 may not feature 4G capabilities or 4G LTE capability.

Some rumors detail that a low cost iPhone 4S, which has been compared to the current iPhone 4, may be the smartphone unveiled at the Oct. 4 conference and released soon after.