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Apple to open first retail store in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market, at financial capital of Mumbai
- The new Apple Store, housed in a posh shopping centre owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, is located in Mumbai’s main business district
- The move highlights Apple’s push to expand in India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation this year
Apple is set to open soon its first official retail store in India, a landmark move for the iPhone maker which is placing big bets on the South Asian nation for everything from manufacturing to sales.
The world’s most valuable company released a picture of the barricade of its new Apple Store in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Wednesday, but stopped short of giving a date for its opening.
The new Apple Store, housed in a posh shopping centre owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, is located in the city’s main business district alongside multinational banks.
The launch highlights Apple’s push to expand in India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation this year. The South Asian country is also the world’s second-largest smartphone market.
India’s growing middle class is an attractive target group for Apple’s pricey smartphones and personal computers, which has prompted the US company and its major suppliers to expand manufacturing operations in the country.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is also building a store in the South Asian nation’s capital, New Delhi.
The US tech giant this year reshuffled the management of its international businesses to put a bigger focus on India, where online sales helped it report record revenue in the December quarter.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook has said Apple is putting “a lot of emphasis on the market” and compared the current state of its work in India to its early years in China.
The company has also made steady efforts to shift more production away from China to countries such as India and Vietnam.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s local manufacturing push, financial incentives and India’s relatively cheaper labour have led Apple’s primary contract manufacturing partner Foxconn Technology Group, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, along with other major Taiwanese suppliers Pegatron Corp and Wistron Corp, to ramp up iPhone production in the country.
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