Apple has been accused of treating India as a �dumping ground� for its phones and tablets that are at the tail end of their product cycles.

Take a look at the company�s product launch record in India: the groundbreaking iPhone1 was never released.

The iPhone 3G was released a month after its US launch in July 2008, but the sales were so sluggish that mobile telephony companies like Airtel and Vodafone were saddled with huge unsold inventories.

Industry insiders said that while Airtel and Vodafone had imported around 40,000 iPhone 3G handsets since 2008, they had together sold not more than 20,000 units.

�With no 3G in India, the iPhone 3G did not have many takers. However, the grey market sales for the basic iPhone (which was never officially launched in India) were higher... around 60,000-80,000 iPhones had already been sold (till the end of 2008) as they were available from 2007,� a source said.

Airtel and Vodafone had to ship the unsold smartphones to other countries where they operate, such as Sri Lanka, which already had 3G services.

The iPhone 3G was the only product from the Apple stable that landed in India within a month of its US launch. The bitter experience with the product muddied the prospects of near-simultaneous launches of phones that have ultra-short product lifecycles. So, the iPhone 3GS came to India in March 2010 � a full nine months after its US launch.

The iPhone4 debuted in June 2010 and no date has been set for its India launch.