Describing India as a “challenging market in the short term”, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to make a foray into the Indian market with “all of our might” through its retail stores and manufacturing capability.
“I think India is a very important market in the long term. It’s a challenging market in the short term. But we’re learning a lot,” he said.
“We have made some adjustments in India and we’ve seen preliminarily some better results there. Everything that we do does advise everything in the future, so we try to learn the best we can and fold that into our thinking. And we’ll obviously do that with this as well,” he said. Last month, Apple dropped the selling price of iPhone XR by up to 22 per cent in the face of stiff competition in the premium smartphone segment in the India.
Apple has started manufacturing in India, which Cook said is important to serve the market in a “reasonable way.”
He added that Apple would like to place retail stores in India, and is working with the government to seek approval.
Talking about the Apple Accelerator in Bengaluru, Cook said the company is “very happy” with some of the things coming out of there.
“It’s a long-term play. It’s not something that’s going to be a huge business overnight. But I think the growth potential is phenomenal,” he said.