First Apple store launched in India

MUMBAI: Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has launched the company’s first retail store in India in the financial capital Mumbai, foreign media reported.

Videos showed Cook waving to customers and opening the store’s doors as employees clapped and cheered. He also greeted customers who visited the store and posed for selfies with some of them.

Cook will also attend the opening of a second store in the capital, Delhi, on Thursday. Reports say that people from across India came to Mumbai to participate in the opening event, which also featured local music and folk dance performances.

The design of the Mumbai store, which is located in an upscale neighbourhood, has been inspired by the ubiquitous black-and-yellow taxis in the city. Until now, Apple products have been available in India either online or through a vast network of resellers. The new stores come at a time when Apple is trying to deepen its retail push in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The iPhone is still an aspirational product in the price-sensitive Indian market, where more than 95% of smartphones run on Google’s Android platform.

India is also rising as a manufacturing base for the iPhone as Apple diversifies its supply chains away from China. India now accounts for five percent of total iPhone production. But experts say that while the stores are an important branding strategy, they won’t have an immediate impact on Apple’s sales in India. Others, however, have pointed out that it’s a good time for Apple to invest in India’s growing “premium smartphone” market, which refers to mobiles that cost 40,000 rupees (£451; $558) or more. “When you launch an Apple store, you’re giving a premium experience to your premium consumers. It might not pull up sales, but it pulls more people into the Apple ecosystem,” technology analyst Navkendar Singh told the BBC. This is Cook’s first trip to India in seven years; the Apple CEO last visited in 2016, when the tech giant was just beginning to scale up operations in the country. Reports say Cook is also expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Deputy IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar as part of his visit. There was no official announcement from Modi’s office regarding this.