Beyond the store: all Apple plans in India
After a long courtship, Apple will soon open its first store in India. The company is betting heavily on the country, both for its vast market and for manufacturing opportunities. All the details
After a seven-year gestation period – the idea dates back to 2016 -, Apple is about to open its first store in India.
THE APPLE STORE IN MUMBAI
The Cupertino-based technology company showed some preview images of the store on April 5th. It will open in Jio World Drive , the mall owned by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani : it is located in Mumbai, the country's financial capital, within the Bandra Kurla luxury complex.
There's no official date yet for it to open, but it will likely be by April, writes Quartz . There are 522 Apple Stores in the world.
Apple is already working on the construction of a second store in India, in the capital New Delhi.
APPLE'S PLANS FOR INDIA
The opening of the store in Mumbai is an important step for Apple, which until now has always sold its products and services to Indian customers through authorized third-party resellers, or through online channels (Amazon or its national version, Flipkart).
On the other hand, India has been an industrial base for Apple's smartphones since 2017. The company, however, is continuing to invest in manufacturing capacity in the country with the aim of producing 25 percent of all smartphones here. his iPhones. At the same time, it aims to expand its clientele through co-working centers equipped with free Wi-Fi, modern meeting rooms and workshops with professionals of various types.
The entry of Apple products into India dates back to 2008. But the real turning point was 2016, when CEO Tim Cook visited India to meet the authorities and obtain authorization to install a retail presence. However, the company was unable to meet the minimum quota of 30 percent of basic materials of Indian origin, which the government imposed on all foreign companies wishing to open their own store in the country. The obligation was then trained in 2019, following pressure from foreign companies; by October of that same year, Apple had already selected the Bandra Kurla complex in Mumbai as the site for its first Indian store, but the coronavirus pandemic caused a slowdown.
WHY INDIA?
All this attention to India from Apple is not accidental. First of all, demography has to do with it: according to some estimates, India's population is larger than China's (1.417 billion people against 1.412). Adding to the vastness of the market is the fact that the middle class is growing and willing to spend: Apple aims to satisfy this need with its iPhones, iPads, iMacs and so on.
Finally, there is geopolitics. Between China and the United States (and Washington's allies, consequently) political tensions are increasingly strong: Beijing wants to create a world order different from the dominant one, American-driven; Washington wants to prevent it, and is trying to halt Chinese technological development – economic power is the precondition for geopolitical one – through restrictions on the export of advanced technologies for microchips .
The contrasts between China and America are triggering an (extremely complicated, and probably only partial) process of "reordering" globalization. Western governments and corporations – the first to reduce dependence on a potentially hostile nation; the latter to avoid getting involved in the trade war – are working to at least partially detach themselves from China, a very important manufacturing location once known as the "factory of the world".
The main alternatives to China are Vietnam, a dynamic nation in Southeast Asia, and India. In addition to the vast market and manpower, India is considered – given the rivalry with Beijing – a political counterweight to China and a nation more easily accessible to the bloc of Western democracies; New Delhi, however, has no intention of taking sides, as demonstrated by the numerous contacts established with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine .
– Read also: All India's plans to climb the ranking of world economies
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/apple-india-primo-negozio/ on Fri, 07 Apr 2023 10:40:26 +0000.