Telkom Kenya to sell iPhone in September
Telkom Kenya has entered into a contract with Apple to sell the iPhone in Kenya to coincide with its Orange mobile service rollout, said Njeri Rionge, chief commercial and marketing officer at Telkom.
It is however unclear which version of the iphone will be available to the Market.
Under the Orange brand, the company is also promising bandwidth and faster network service at a lower price.
This gives Telkom Kenya an advantage in the data transmission segment of the market, it will be able to carry more traffic with cheaper tariffs until the country gets connected to the Eassy fibre optic network which is still under construction.
Looking at the framework through which the iphone3g is availabe in both the UK & the US, it is likely that Teklom Kenya/ Orange will adopt a similar approach.
In the US the phone is locked to a contract with AT & T as the sole & exclusive carrier. In the UK it is a similar situation with the Oxygen network.
There are unlocked iPhone3g’s available on the internet but they are pricey and unlocking one voids the warranty that comes with the phone from apple.
As for which model will be available? I suspect the iPhone3g as apple is phasing out the previous version. in addition Safaricom has set the bar pretty high by rolling out their 3g network. Therefore, To supply the older version to this market will simply be product dumping.
An alternative would be for apple to make the phone available directly to consumers without the carrier contract but the downside is that these phones may filter back to those countries where a carrier contract is mandatory and negatively impact on the revenues of the selected carrier networks.
Besides, who needs all the grief that an iphone brings? Buy a high-end Nokia, Motorola, Samusung or whatever and you’ll still get the same features.