If you’ve registered your interest with DiGi for the iPhone 4, you should have gotten a little teaser email this evening. DiGi says that the iPhone 4 is here and it will be available next week, making it anywhere between 19th-25th of September. Maxis is believed to be launching next week as well. Who will launch first? We will find out next week. This is it people, the iPhone 4 here in Malaysia next week!

Don’t forget to claim your free bumper from Apple as the case program ends 30th September.

Maxis officially revealed pricing of iPhone 3GS 8GB which is exactly the same as the leaked figures.

As expected, the price for the new 8GB iPhone 3GS is similar to the old iPhone 3G price of the same capacity at the time the iPhone 3GS was introduced back in 2009.

With the entry-level 8GB 3GS introduced, it looks like the iPhone 4 is not far away from being launched in Malaysia. We may be off in our predictions on when the iPhone 4 will be launched but in terms of pricing you can expect it to be roughly if not exactly the same as the iPhone 3GS when it first came into the market here.

Also in terms of plans, we don’t expect much to change from the previous iPhone offerings. But if you recall, DiGi was the first to open registration of interest of the iPhone 4 on its website back in July 2010. So with the added competition from DiGi — who may or may not release the iPhone 4 earlier than Maxis — we’re expecting some deal sweetening offers from both sides.

Although the price of the phones might not change much the two telcos may go out on a limb to offer rebates and value-add freebies to get you to sign-up with them.

It’s going to be interesting to watch.

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UPDATE (20100920) : Maxis iPhone 4 plans for launch leaked. Read about it here.

UPDATE (20100917) : DiGi confirms iPhone 4 stock in Malaysia. To launch week of 20th September 2010. Read about it here.

Ok so the official word is out, DiGi and Maxis have opened registration of interest for the iPhone 4 but little else has been revealed.

We don’t know the pricing, we don’t know the plans and we don’t know when will the iPhone 4 be available in stores.

But we know the industry enough to be able to put out some predictions that’s pretty accurate. Earlier we predicted that pre-order, or more accurately, registration of interest (ROI), will happen after 19 July and it did.

Now that the ROIs are out, we can with some degree of accuracy predict when the in-store dates for the iPhone 4 will be. It will be roughly two weeks from today. If you count the exact days that puts the iPhone 4 launch on 3 August. But we’re going to go slightly conservative on our prediction put the iPhone 4 launch sometime within the week starting 2 August.

Alright, we’ve established the possible launch date, now lets look at the pricing.

It’s probably safe to say that prices for the iPhone 4 will not change much from the current iPhone 3G and 3GS prices in the market right now. That means, the entry-level 8GB 3GS will cost RM1,999, the 16GB iPhone 4 RM2,490 and the 32GB iPhone 4 will be priced at RM2,499 RM2,990. We don’t expect much change from this.

Now the question on the minds of every single person that intends to get the iPhone 4 will be the plans. What kind of plans will be available for the iPhone 4? Interesting enough, we don’t except to see anything to change from the plans that’s available now. We might be wrong on this but we really think the telcos will continue on with the current plans. Although we’re not going to discount the fact that there might be some enhancements here and there, perhaps a higher data quota or maybe even a monthly rebate. But essentially, the upcoming iPhone 4 plans will be the same as what you’re seeing now for the 3G and 3GS..

Will you be getting free Bumpers? We don’t see a reason why not. Jobs made the announcement himself. So you can expect free Bumpers to come with your iPhone 4. But expect limited choices of colours (if there’s any options at all), maybe even a cheap third party rip-off. This might happen but we could be wrong and it might not.

What about existing iPhone 3G and 3Gs owners, is there an upgrade plan for them?
It’s not unheard of but don’t expect anything great. Prior to the 3GS launch, Maxis offered a RM500 rebate to selected iPhone 3G owners. The catch is the rebate will only reflect on your bill and you’ll have to the full price for the phone, so expect something similar from Maxis for the iPhone 4.

DiGi could also offer the same thing but it might be less in terms value considering DiGi only introduced the 3GS in April.With two telco in the iPhone game now the competition will be intense so with this, anything is game

We’ll have to wait and see what DiGi and Maxis can serve up come August. It will definitely be interesting because now there are two telcos vying for a very lucrative segment of the market, consumers will have the ultimate say on this and we advice you to decide with your strongest voice, your money.

UPDATE: DiGi confirms iPhone 4 stock in Malaysia. To launch week of 20th September 2010. Read about it here.

Well, well what do you know, DiGi silently with no fuss beat Maxis to the announcement.

Yes people, DiGi is the first telco in Malaysia to offer pre-orders registration of interest for the flawed iPhone 4.

It also turns out that our predictions on the pre-order date is correct but we got the telco completely wrong. We predicted earlier that Maxis will open pre-orders for the iPhone 4 sometime this week. It turns out DiGi quietly beat them to it.

No launch date has been released but if our predictions are true, Malaysians could be officially getting their iPhone 4s early in August. We wonder if DiGi’s move is actually a pre-emptive strike to defuse something that Maxis is planing to announce soon?

We still have a feeling that Maxis will announce something about the iPhone 4 soon.

Head on over to DiGi’s iPhone pre-order page for details

Our complete coverage of the iPhone 4:
BREAKING: Maxis launches iPhone 4 promo site
iPhone 4 with Maxis: Pre-orders when?
Maxis COO says iPhone 4 could be here in August, iPad 3G in the works
Countries getting the iPhone 4 and when
RUMOUR: DiGi to offer iPhone 4 in second half 2010
OFFICIAL: Maxis will launch the iPhone 4
UPDATE: Apple introduces iPhone 4. Could be in Malaysia as early as August

(UPDATE 1929hrs 12072010) Maxis made the announcement and sorry guys, it’s not what you think. Still no word on when the iPhone 4 will be here.

Maxis via tweeter today indicated that the telco will be announcing something exciting today.

Naturally, many of you, including us, are wondering if this impending announcement will have anything to do with the iPhone 4 coming to Malaysia soon.

We don’t know. It could be an announcement about the iPhone 4 or it could very well not be. So we’ll have wait for the official word from Maxis.

We predicted that iPhone 4 pre-orders will be open on Maxis sometime around 19 July, could this tweet mean that they are opening the pre-orders earlier? Let’s wait and see.

But if the recent DiGi revision in its own iPhone packages and the recent spate of announcements from Maxis upper management is anything to go by, this announcement could be the one many are waiting for.

Watch this space.

We’ve pretty much correctly predicted when the iPhone 4 will be coming to Malaysia. Now we’ll look into our crystal ball to see roughly when Maxis will open pre-orders for the device.

In our earlier post we mentioned that the most likely date for a Malaysian iPhone 4 launch is August. We highlighted a few reasons why we think August will be the month, one of the main point is Maxis would want to do get the launch over and done with before Ramadhan kicks in – which will be roughly around the second week of August.

Ok, assuming the launch will be before Ramadhan (roughly around the first week of August), we can work backwards and roughly have a feel of when the pre-orders for the iPhone 4 will open. And judging by Maxis’ previous trends with pre-orders, you’re looking at probably a two-week buffer before the launch date.

This will give the PR and Marketing people in Maxis enough time to create buzz and run some PR stunts and God forbid, run another top 10 review program. Pre-order for the iPhone 4 won’t start more than two weeks before its launch as from our own experience starting pre-orders more than two weeks ahead of the actual launch date of any device will be challenging. PR and Marketing will have a difficult time maintaining the excitement.

Even in the US, pre-orders for the iphone 4 started on 15 June, exactly 10 days before the June 24 in-stores date. So we’re expecting something similar with Maxis.

In fact, if you look at past iPhone launches from Maxis, you can see a trend:
iPhone 3G: announced March 11, 2009. In-stores March 20, 2009 – 9 days
iPhone 3GS: pre-orders July 10, 2010 2009. In-stores July 18, 2010 2009 – 8 days

Like we said, pre-orders will start about two week before the launch and if the launch is early August, you can expect Maxis to say something around 19 July onwards.

We’ll have to warn you though, this is just a prediction and we could really get it all wrong. So please don’t take it as confirmed. Well, at least not yet.

And if you’re wondering, as of now, still no word on DiGi about the iPhone 4.

Earlier, we asked the question to DiGi and Maxis on whether they will bring the 8GB iPhone 3GS to Malaysia.

Today, just a day of the iPhone 4 launch in the US and a few other lucky countries, Maxis confirms on twitter that they will be bringing in the iPhone 3GS 8GB version which was announced together with the iPhone 4. No word on when but we have a strong feeling that it will be in August.

The iPhone 3GS 8GB will become the entry level iPhone and it will come with iOS 4 installed.

It is highly possible that the iPhone 4 will be introduced by Maxis at the same time.

With this latest development, we would be expecting pre-ordering for the iPhone 4 pretty soon.

Alright, for those of you who’s wondering which countries will be getting the iPhone 4 and when, here’s a list we’ve compiled based on what has been announced at the WWDC10.

In stores June 24 2010 (pushed back to July 14)

1. US
2. France
3. Germany
4. UK
5. Japan

In stores July 2010

1. Australia
2. Austria
3. Belgium
4. Canada
5. Denmark
6. Finland
7. Hong Kong
8. Ireland
9. Italy
10. Luxembourg
11. Netherlands
12. Norway
13. New Zealand
14. Singapore (!)
15. South Korea
16. Spain
17. Sweden
18. Switzerland

Apple will be adding another 24 countries in August and in September another 44 countries that will be getting the iPhone 4.

The question on everyone’s mind (well, in Malaysia at least) is when and which telco will be bringing in the iPhone 4. We can tell you right now, its not going to be July. We’re shooting for August and our money is on Maxis to be the first Malaysian telco to offer the iPhone.

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(Update 20072010 1738hrs) Looks like our predictions are correct. BREAKING: DiGi opens pre-order for iPhone 4.

Immediately after the iPhone 4 was revealed at WWDC10, Maxis has announced that it will launch the device within the third quarter of this year.

Now sources deep within DiGi are throwing around the possibility of them launching the iPhone 4 in the second half of 2010.

We have to make it very clear that this is just a rumour. DiGi has yet to release any official word on this but there’s compeling evidence to say that this rumour could very well be true. We’ve pointed out DiGi’s CEO saying that DiGi are key partners with Apple and that DiGi fully understands that its subscribers expect to get the latest devices. So there might be some weight in this rumour.

There’s a whole six months in the second half of 2010 and that’s a big time window for things to happen. Based on the information we have, we can narrow down DiGi’s iPhone 4 launch to within a couple of months within the third quarter of 2010.

We know that it is almost certainly not going to be July. Here’s why, in his keynote Jobs stated that the first shipments of the iPhone 4 in June 24 is going to five countries with Japan being the only Asian receipient. In July 2010, the second batch of iPhone 4 shipments will go to an additional 18 countries of which will be Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. So, July is almost definitely out of the question for a Malaysian iPhone 4 launch.

Jobs mentioned in his keynote that 24 more markets will open for the iPhone 4 in August and an additional 88 in September. That leaves August and September as probable launch windows for DiGi and Maxis to launch the iPhone 4. So when will it be?

In our previous post, we toyed around with the possibility of DiGi and Maxis launching the iPhone 4 together. Although this can be done, we thought that this might be very unlikely based on the past iPhone launches in other countries.

But we might be wrong because fresh off the iPhone 4 announcement in WWDC10, six telcos in two countries have confirmed availability in June and July (specifically three telcos in UK in June and another three telcos in Canada in July).

So we’re not rulling out a simultaneous iPhone 4 launch here in Malaysia, but we’re still not holding our breaths.

Now, back to August and September. We predicted that the iPhone 4 could be here as early as August and we’re gravitating towards that. Reason being? The fasting month. Ramadhan will hit sometime around 9-10 August. And if we know PR, everyone will want to clear out events before Ramadhan, which is usually a quite month with less promotions and launches (a part from Hari raya deals etc.).

On the other hand, launches during the Ramadhan month is not uncommon but considering the scale of previous iPhone launches here, Maxis and DiGi would want to get it over and done with before everyone starts fasting. They will want to do a big launch party with a strong pre-launch campaign to tap into the power of social media.

What if Maxis and DiGi miss August? Well, then that leaves us with September which we think is not looking like a good month. You have to take into account that the market would have already spent their money on Hari Raya festivities and the telcos could only do a launch ever at the third week of September (because Raya holidays, which will start around 10-11 September, will take a week off the month).

Add to that the fact that the telcos would want to launch the iPhone 4 as soon as possible and the fact that it’s always nice to have a new phone to show off to friends and family during the festive period; so we’re putting our money on a very likely August launch for the iPhone 4 in Malaysia.

Will it be a simultaneous launch for both Maxis and DiGi? We’re 50-50 on that. It might be it might not, that’s up to the telcos to work out. Because they know, the one that comes late to the iPhone 4 party will have a hell of a lot to lose.

The good thing, at the end of the day, it’s us – the consumer – that’s going to win big.

So what do you think? When will the iPhone 4 launch in Malaysia?

UPDATE (20100920) : Maxis iPhone 4 pricing and plans for launch leaked. Read about it here.

(UPDATE 2114hrs 20072010) BREAKING: Maxis launches iPhone 4 promo site with registration of interest.

(UPDATE 2050hrs 29062010) Maxis COO confirms that iPhone 4 is coming in August.

(UPDATE 1350hrs 08062010) We’ve gathered more updates from Maxis via twitter and here are a few more details of the Malaysian iPhone launch. It will not be next month but it will be within the third quarter of this year. So it looks like it will be either August or September. Again, we’re hoping its August

We just received an official statement from Maxis.

“Maxis Berhad will launch iPhone 4, the thinnest smartphone in the world with the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, in Malaysia in the coming months.”

Not much more detail have been revealed but if our predictions are right. The iPhone 4 could be here as early as August.

Now the next question is, will Maxis offer upgrade schemes like AT&T does with its iPhone subscribers?

We’ll let you know once we know.

And if you’re wondering, so far, no word from DiGi on what their plans are for the iPhone 4. Though DiGi’s CEO have mentioned that they are a key partner with Apple. Anything to say DiGi?