iPhone 6, 6 Plus to be officially available on Friday

Nov 13th at 14:30

13-11-2014 14:30:04+07:00

US-based Apple Inc’s latest smartphones, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, will be officially distributed by military-run Viettel and FPT starting Friday this week (November 14).

Viettel on Wednesday announced that they will begin to sell all the current versions of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus depending on the capacity of their internal memories on Friday, the same day FPT has previously scheduled to sell the smartphones.

They will be available at the outlets of Viettel and FPT Shop, the retail chain of technology firm FPT, so that local customers can come for a brief “touch and try” time or for buying the gadgets.

Both Viettel and FPT have allowed customers to pre-order, but have yet announced the official prices.

iPhone 6 offered by Viettel will have the prices of VND16.5 million, VND19.1 million and VND 21.7 million for the versions with the capacity of 16 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, respective. With iPhone 6 Plus models, the respective prices for the 16 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB will be VND19.1 million, VND21.7 million and VND24.3 million.

These smartphones are the locked versions that are tied with Viettel network. Users can choose to pay an additional VND700,000 so that their devices will be unlocked to be an international version that can work with all carriers.

The price announced by Viettel this year is nearly VND800,000 higher than the iPhone 5S with the same internal memory capacity last year. However, this price is equivalent to the Singapore market, said Viettel.

The information that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be officially sold this weekend has become a major blow to the price of the smartphones on the gray market.

The selling prices of those handsets, which were often brought to Vietnam by individuals buying it in foreign markets, have fallen rapidly over the past weeks and reached an attractive levels, equivalent to the price of the officially distributed devices, said insiders.

Earlier, a representative of FPT Shop, the local Apple authorized dealership, said the system has received 1,026 orders for the iPhone 6 just in the first hour of the day November 8 when FPT Shop began to receive pre-orders.

FPT Shop in late September said it will start selling the new iPhones by the end of October. The 16GB iPhone 6 is expected to fetch VND18 million ($847), and the iPhone 6 Plus, VND20 million ($941).

By the end of September Mobile phone stores in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City said they could not meet demand from diehard local Apple fans who want to be the first to have the latest iPhone models, even though the handsets are selling for up to VND70 million (US$3,295) each.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus unofficially arrived in Vietnam on September 19, shortly after the devices were released in ten markets, including Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong, the same day.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus officially hit shelves in the U.S., the UK, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan on September 19, and Apple has said the devices will be available in at least 115 markets by the end of the year.

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