HTC have today launched the HTC Diamond - in India, exlusively through Bharti Airtel.

The Price is 27,500 Rupees which equates into about $640.

These devices will not come with HSDPA nor HSUPA, hence the low price, but will provide EDGE connectivity.

HTC chief Peter Chou himself was on hand for the announcement, saying that he'd like to sell 50,000 Touch Diamonds in India this year. 

They launched it in India first? That's strange. Usually it starts in the States or in some European country first then it gradually (but slowly) makes its way to other countries. And of course Canada is the last one to get it...and sometimes never.

As for the price, I expected it would be in that range. But I hoped they would lower the cost a bit since there are a lot of camera phones out there with built in GPS that run Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

Nevertheless, it is a good looking phone with a lot of great features.

Does anybody know how come India got lucky ?

Well, in 2007, Bharti Airtel launched the Touch with HTC..

I guess that it went well enough for them to agree to launch the HTC Diamond as well.

Bharti Airtel currently have 65 million GSM subscribers, which may be the other half of the reason.

Interestingly, athough they annouced that the Diamond has been released today, another reports states that Bharti Airtel will not launch the Diamond until mid-June...

After a little more investigation, I have that my original source announcing the availability of the Diamond today actually referred only to its 'launch'.

The presentation in India was in fact a copy of the launch party held in London earlier this month.

India will release the device mid June. 

I have also renamed the thread to match