Good news for users of iPad, iPhone and iPod in India! After a long wait, Apple has finally opened the iTunes Store in India, offering consumers the ability to purchase Bollywood and regional music, buy or rent movies, in local currency. In addition to local Indian content, Indian users can also buy international movies and music from the iTunes Store. The Indian movies and music collection on iTunes is currently limited and it is expected that Apple will widen its offering soon.
Apple has rolled out the iTunes Store to 55 other countries besides India, most notable of which are Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa. With this, the Apple iTunes Store is now available in 119 countries, while the App Store is available in 155 countries.
Indian customers will get to choose from over 20 million songs available for purchase and download on iTunes Store, Apple said in statement. Songs are priced at about Rs. 12. Latest Bollywood albums, like ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, is available for Rs. 96. Users can also rent and downloaded movies. A high definition version of a movie like ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ is available for purchase for Rs. 490, while the standard version is available for Rs. 290. Users also get the option to rent the title for Rs. 120 (HD version) or for Rs. 80 (SD version).
Prices on the iTunes Store is a little higher than what is being offered by Flyte, Flipkart’s iTunes-like store for digital music and ebooks. For example the Dabangg 2 album is available for Rs 72 on Flyte, whereas on iTunes it is priced at Rs 96. On Flyte individual song downloads are available for Rs 6, but on iTunes the price is about Rs 12.
In India, Apple iTunes store will face competition from Nokia Music Store that has a catalogue of over 4.5 million songs, and Flipkart’s digital music store, Flyte. Nokia claims that its music stores sees 1.4 million song downloads a day.
