iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
Apple is ready to lift the curtains off its branded retail stores in Mumbai and Delhi, as it ramps up plans to boost local manufacturing in India. Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to inaugurate the stores.
Apple revealed the barricade of its first brick-and-mortar store in India on Wednesday, April 12, at Jio World Drive Mall in Mumbai, officially marking the upcoming opening of Apple BKC. Inspired by the iconic ‘Kaali Peeli’ taxi art unique to Mumbai, the Apple BKC creative includes colorful interpretations of the decals combined with many Apple products and services that will be available for our customers to discover. The creative for the store features a bright welcome to people passing by with the classic Apple greeting, “Hello Mumbai”. The other store in India is going to come up in Select CityWalk mall in Saket, Delhi.
“To celebrate the opening of the new store, visitors can download the new Apple BKC wallpaper and move to the sounds of Mumbai with a specially curated playlist on Apple Music,” the company said.
The tech giant has set another all-time revenue record for the Indian market, along with quarterly records in Brazil and India. Apple CEO Tim Cook said recently that looking at the business in India, “We set a quarterly revenue record and grew very strong double digits year over year and so we feel very good about how we performed”.
“That’s despite the headwinds that we talked about. India is a hugely exciting market for us and a major focus. We brought the online store there in 2020. We will soon bring Apple Retail there,” Cook announced in February 2023. He said that Apple actually did fairly well through Covid in India.
“That’s the reason why we are investing by bringing retail there, bringing the online store there, and putting out a significant amount of energy there. I’m very bullish on India,” the CEO added.
Apple sold 2 million iPhones in India in the holiday quarter (Q4) of 2022, registering 18 percent growth (quarter-on-quarter) for its flagship device. The Indian market share of iPhones reached 5.5 percent for 2022, an 11 percent growth (year-on-year).
According to the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), Apple’s ‘Make in India’ smartphone now constitutes 50 percent of total exports. Reports surfaced earlier this year that Cook-led Apple will quickly shift some of its China manufacturing to India and Vietnam in the next 2-3 years. India is likely to produce 45-50 percent of Apple’s iPhones by 2027, at par with China, where 80-85 percent of iPhones were produced in 2022, according to estimates. It currently manufactures iPhones 12, 13, 14 and 14 Plus in India
India accounted for 10-15 percent of iPhones’ overall production capacity at the end of 2022. Apple became the first smartphone player in India to have exported $1 billion worth of iPhones in December 2022.
