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Will the iPhone Bomb In India?

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on December 18, 2007

Colleague Bruce Nussbaum just stopped by to tell me about his experience with a pack of iPhone owners he encountered in India. While the iPhone hasn’t officially launched in India, I’m told there’s a rather thriving black market for the device there. Anyhow Nussbaum quizzed a few iPhone owners there on their experience, and he found an interesting response. They were unhappy with the iPhone’s text messaging capabilities. Texting is a big deal in India, and a very common need is the ability to send a single message to many people at once, or group-texting. The iPhone doesn’t do this well, suggesting that before attacking the Indian market, Apple will likely have to upgrade its text software. He blogged about it next door at NussbaumOnDesign.

It all goes to show ow people in different countries use technology. It never would have occurred to me to send a text message from a phone to many people at once. If you’re like me, a text message is one-to-one sort of experience. However, this seems like the sort of thing that Apple can fix.

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Reader Comments

iPhoner

December 18, 2007 06:02 PM

Many people in the US use broadcast text messages to wish happy holidays or announce an impromtu evening event. Not to mention the use by corporations to get their message out.

Oh Blah Dee Blah Dah

December 18, 2007 08:18 PM

RE: "this seems like the sort of thing that Apple can fix"

Yes! It can be "fixed."
This is just one of the benefits of OS X being in Apple products. The software is upgraded and the new feature is displayed on the touch screen.

Apple does NOT need to redesign a plastic keyboard nor develop an new operating system nor manufacture a completely different handheld device.

Perry Clease

December 19, 2007 01:01 PM

I do not yet have an iPhone, but can you set up a group address in Mail and then use that to send to multiple addresses?

Norwegian

December 19, 2007 04:03 PM

There already is a solution called SMSD that solves this problem. If you have a hacked iPhone you can find under the INSTALLER application

Perry Clease

December 19, 2007 04:10 PM

Doh!, With a Homer Simpson slap to my head. I meant to say create a mail group in Address Book not Mail.

Janus

December 19, 2007 09:59 PM

I have an iPhone and definitely miss the ability to SMS to multiple at once.

Arnel Villaroman

December 20, 2007 04:06 AM

have you not heard about a 3rd party apps with multi adressee capability for texting? you can also forward the text to as many recipient as you want. Go and visit modmyifone.com.

mburnett

December 20, 2007 02:16 PM

I really wish my iPhone had this feature. It will come I'm sure. (wrote this on my iPhone!)

Anand

December 20, 2007 06:47 PM

An Iphone application written by an Indian is already available for the current version of the iPhone 1.1.2. It is named SMSD...

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A blog on the daily doings of Apple and the many companies in its orbit, with insight and analysis by two longtime Apple-watchers BusinessWeek Senior Writer Peter Burrows and BusinessWeek.com Senior Technology Writer Arik Hesseldahl.

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