iPhone 5 is the most popular phone by Apple till now but due to its high price its selling graph is average. Now a budget iPhone 5 is about to come to Market with a price tag of only Rs 18,000.
A plastic iPhone 5 that would cost roughly half the price of the
standard Apple smartphone will be launched soon to target young, middle
class consumers in countries like China and India.
Indian operator Aircel sprung a pleasant surprise by announcing that it had slashed the iPhone 3GS price to Rs. 9,999 (US $180). While the iPhone 3GS is available for free on a contract in the US, as far as total cost of ownership is concerned, the Aircel deal is probably the cheapest iPhone anywhere in the world.
Aircel is offering the black 8GB iPhone 3GS for an upfront payment of Rs. 9,999 (US $180) and an "advance rental" of Rs. 3,000 (US $55). This advance rental gets you 2GB of 3G data per month for an year or 1000 minutes and 2500 text messages per month for 6 months.
The icing on the cake is that the phones are unlocked, which means you are free to take the phone anywhere in the world, and put in a SIM of your choice. That's right, an unlocked iPhone for a total cost of $235 ($180 + $55).
As a contrast, in the US you can pick-up an iPhone 3GS 8GB for free but with a two-year $39.99 a month contract. That's a whooping $960 over the 24 months, and the device is locked to AT&T for the length of the contract.
Alternatively, you can pick up an unlocked iPhone for an up-front $375 in the US, £319.00 ($498) in the UK, HKD 2,888 ($372) in Hong Kong, A$449 ($465) in Australia or Euro 349 ($424) in Spain. That makes the Aircel iPhone 3GS the cheapest by a wide-margin - $137 or around Rs. 7500.
Now if that isn't the cheapest iPhone deal anywhere in the world, we don't know what is. No seriously, if your country/ operator offers a cheaper iPhone total cost of ownership, let us know via the comments!!!!
