Telkomsel iPhone 3GS gets a release date?
Late last month we saw OKEshop outlets sporting actual iPhone 3GS banners at their shops and just today, we received word from id-mac mailing list that a customer service officer at Grapari in Bandung claims that Telkomsel will finally release iPhone 3GS on January 20, 2010. Grapari is of course Telkomsel's official retail and customer service outlet.
With two weeks ahead of the supposed launch date, there is still no official word or press release about the launch although the signs are pointing there. There is currently no word about pricing or packaged plans either. Unlike the big hype surrounding the albeit late iPhone 3G launch last March, the buzz around the 3GS in Indonesia is almost nonexistent.
Telkomsel had been pushing the 8GB and 16GB 3G iPhones out the door since September by selling them for practically at cost and while it still is not enough to meet the company's supposed target of 220 thousand units, looks like they've managed to push out enough units to finally sell the 3GS.
The pre-order page for the 3GS has been around since September although the company had only been publicly sending notices about it early in December.
Buried under the hype of BlackBerrys and Nexians, Telkomsel seemed to resign to the fact that people weren't going to flock to buy their iPhones in droves. Those who were really enthusiastic about Apple's smartphone chose to go the private import way. They bought iPhone 3GS from countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia where they can buy them unlocked for around the same price as a local iPhone 3G.
Hopefully with an additional two month lead time compared to their previous effort, along with nine months of experience, Telkomsel has figured out a way to avoid the disastrous 2009 campaign and start marketing iPhone 3GS properly.
Posted
by Aulia Masna
