Tim Cook will personally inaugurate the first Apple Stores in India during a loaded trip
Tim Cook will be showing the growing importance of India for Apple's supply chain and as a market by opening the first Apple Stores there next week, tips Bloomberg. The Apple Stores in Delhi and Mumbai will mark a watershed moment or Apple's presence in India after Tim Cook's first visit way back in 2016.
Apple is trying to diversify its supply chain away from China, given all the geopolitical brouhaha surrounding production and assembly there. The US government is pushing companies to gradually find alternatives to the "world's factory," which will be a bi challenge for companies like Apple going forward.
It is not easy to replace a manufacturing giant like Foxconn which puts together the lion's share of Apple's iPhones and other devices. Still, Apple has been gaining a foothold in India for a while. The country is on the cusp to become the one with the largest population but recruiting and training its workforce according to Apple's standards will take time and effort.
While previously India was reserved for simple handsets like the iPhone SE, in recent years Apple has been tasking its Indian partners with more and more complex devices, including the iPhone 14 that began production there last year.
Recently, the Indian minister of economics mentioned that Apple intends to boost India's share of iPhone production to 25% from the current 5%-7%, entrusting its local assemblers with higher and higher manufacturing volumes.
Besides opening the first retail Apple Stores in the country, Tim Cook will reportedly also be meeting with none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi who will eventually reiterate his promises for billions of dollars in government incentives should Apple decide to up its manufacturing base in India.
In its turn, Apple's CEO praised India as a market during the last earnings conference, saying that Apple notched a quarterly revenue in the country. "India is a hugely exciting market for us and a major focus... I’m very bullish on India," he added.
Such words were previously reserved for Apple's presence in China, so it remains to be heard if Tim Cook will announce something more significant than the mere opening of the Mumbai store on April 18 and the New Delhi Apple Store on April 20. The first Apple Stores in India will be located in glitzy shopping malls like the ones in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex, or in New Delhi's Saket district.
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