Just received an SMS yesterday evening from my mobile service provider, Maxis, informing the launch of the official iPhone 3G in Malaysia.

Well, after about 2 years since its first launch in the US, the long-awaited iPhone has finally hit Malaysia… a little too late.

Last December, I wrote a post about the failure iPhone 3G suffered during its launch in India. Frankly, I would expect the same will happen in Malaysia.

Below are my top 8 reasons why official iPhone 3G would fail in Malaysia :-

• 1. The hype of iPhone is certainly over. What iPhone? It’s all about recession right now!
• 2. Many iPhone killer (mostly touchscreen mobile phones) are freely available with no string (the stupid subscription plan) attached.
• 3. One of iPhone rivals, Nokia XpressMusic 5800, is selling at less than half of the iPhone 3G’s price. Would you pay around RM3,000 for an iPhone 3G, while you can get a XpressMusic 5800 for only RM1,400?
• 4. Too costly, for a mobile phone with only 2MP camera, no MMS, lack of Bluetooth support, no Flash support, no cut&paste function, etc.
• 5. No unlimited data plan. The maximum data usage included is 3GB and you have no other choice to make it unlimited using their subscription plan.
• 6. Reading through the lengthy terms & conditions before signing up makes me dizzy. The killer is actually the last term saying “Other Terms and Conditions apply.“! o_O”
• 7. You can get unlocked smuggled iPhone 3G easily, at a much lower price. This is Malaysia, you know! You may then top it up with an unlimited data package for only RM120 RM99/month from the same provider (Maxis). LoL!
• 8. The real iPhone killer is launching soon! The price is about the same too.

I understand iPhone fans may not agree to any (if not all) of the reasons above. Anyway, tell me what do you think.

Google is counting down to 2009 with us in its own way : by showing us tips of how to use various Google services on each day in this month.

Today’s tips is to keep an eye on your stocks by searching for its Stock Symbol using Google.
Well, not like there will be any sharp hike in price soon. Haha… :p

Anyway, head over to Google Countdown To 2009 page and check out all 15 tips so far.

In fact, instead of showing us tips for existing services I would love to see them revealing information on new services that they’ll release next year. It’ll be more interesting then, don’t you think so?

It seems that not everyone is anticipating the launch of iPhone in their country. Well, at least not in India.

The launch in Hong Kong and Singapore was fascinating and quite successful. I was there in Hong Kong when the iPhone was first launched, long queues and big crowds were easily to be seen outside the selected mobile phone outlets. So does what happened in Singapore, but unfortunately not in India.

It is reported there were only around 12,000 units sold since its first day launching in India, which is less than a quarter of the imported 50,000 iPhones for sale in India. Is this the effect of the economy slowdown? Or disappointing marketing campaign? Or just merely difference in taste?

Anyway, some say that a flawed sales and distribution model and communications failure contributed heavily to the debacle, such as :-

• Outlets failed to obtain necessary permissions to stay open in midnight for the midnight sale.
• Apple spent very little on marketing for the iPhone prior to its launch
• Apple’s failure to properly communicate how much the iPhone would cost in India

Apple initially announced that iPhone would be selling for about US$199 globally and this news gave potential customers false hope because Apple is now selling 8Gig version for US$700, while 16Gig version for US$825 in India.

I suppose iPhone will be launched in Malaysia next year, which is a year troubled by bad economy. Do you think we’ll see pathetic sale here as well?

iPod’s fans have made history as Apple announced yesterday that there have been 100 million iPods sold to date, since its launch in November 2001! 100 million sold in five and a half years is incredible and there is no doubt iPod is still the pioneer in music player industry.

Aside from making history, one of the good side effects from this incredible sales is that it brought sales to other products too.

Quoted:
The iPod has also sparked an unprecedented ecosystem of over 4,000 accessories made specifically for the iPod that range from fashionable cases to speaker systems, and more than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles currently offer iPod connectivity.

Anyway, if you want to know more about iPod, Wikipedia has a very detailed page for it.

I have blogged about some crazy domain sales from Yahoo and GoDaddy before. Today there is another unbeatable crazy sale of domain name, this time is from one of famous local hosting companies, Exabytes!

They are now selling .com, .net & .org domain names at only RM0.99!! Yes, the price is quoted in Ringgit Malaysia!
Exabytes claims this is the cheapest offer and the FIRST in Malaysia to offer such a price! I do agree on this.

Click on the image to see the offer.

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Exabytes RM0.99 Domain Crazy Sale

After been labeled #2 most influential blog in Malaysia, I better write something related to the blogphere here. Well, since many bloggers in Malaysia are earning through blogging these days, we should really pay attention to the currency exchange.

Sad to say that we don’t always get good news from this blog. Yesterday, the foreign exchange rate Ringgit Malaysia (RM) to 1 US Dollar has dropped below 3.50 since November 1997 during the economy crisis in Malaysia. The exchange rate was 3.4963 as at 5.32pm yesterday.

Please note that the rate at 3.4963 is just the market exchange rate, you will have lower rate when you exchange locally, depending on which bank you exchange with. In other words, the bank will buy your US Dollar at a lower rate than 3.4963.

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Ringgit To US Dollar Gone Below 3.50 !