Apple TV now available in India

By Darshik Jariwala - February, 20th 2013

Apple is now finally realizing its potential market in India. Apple iPhone 5 is apparently quite a success in Indian markets. And that seems to have motivated apple to finally treat the Indian market with its much awaited Apple TV.

The Apple TV appeared out of nowhere in Apple’s official website for India. It also shows some Hindi movies in its screenshots, along with a tagline which reads, “With the best HD content and AirPlay, there’s always something good on TV.” The Apple TV can be purchased by the users for a hefty price tag of a cool Rs. 8,295 which is $153 US. In US, Apple TV, currently sells for $99. Indian users can use the Apple TV to purchase the contents from their iTunes store. In fact, it was only few months ago when iTunes store was launched in India along with other countries. Prior that, movies, music and TV shows were not available on their iTunes store. It is yet to be observed how it fares in India. Apart from buying the music, it will be interesting to see if Indian users open up to the idea of renting/buying movies and TV shows. People there are still known to rely only on renting/buying DVD‘s to watch movies. Also, streaming movies and TV shows too could prove to be an issue, except for the metro cities in the country.

According to a report posted by SiliconIndia, India stands at 116^th position in global ranking for its internet speed, with an average speed of just 1Mbps and a peak speed of merely 6.7Mbps. 1 Mbps is certainly not enough if you plan to stream HD movies over Apple TV. And, Only 1.2 percent of connections in the country have speed of over 4Mbps. As I said, the internet conditions are much better in metro cities, where speed goes up to 8Mbps. I think if you have a good internet connection, Apple TV would be an amazing buy. It remains to be seen if Indian users do wake up to the idea of renting TV shows and movies online instead of the traditional DVD’s.

Photo Credit – Julien GONG Min/Flickr