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Nearly seven years after Tim Cook first visited India as CEO of Apple, he reportedly plans to return next week for a headline occasion: Opening the country’s first two Apple stores.
The first store should debut on Tuesday in Mumbai, with the second opening Thursday in New Delhi.
The news comes after the iPhone surpassed competitors in Q4 2022 for top billing as the country’s best-selling smartphone and set an all-time iPhone revenue record in India, according to Apple’s February earnings call.
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The retail news also marks a shift in Apple’s corporate strategy. Amid complicated US-China trade relations and pandemic-era supply-chain issues, the company is reportedly looking to lessen its reliance on China and amp up its representation in India.
This new strategy might be coming at an opportune time: Apple PC shipments declined by more than 40% in Q1 2023, according to the International Data Corporation’s quarterly tracker—notably, the sharpest decline in over 22 years, per Bloomberg. Although the shipment struggles affected a wide range of computer makers, including HP, Lenovo, Dell, and others, the slump seemed to hit Apple hardest.
Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO, said on the company’s earnings call in February that it saw double-digit growth in India. On the same call, Cook underscored Apple’s focus on the country.
“India is a hugely exciting market for us and is a major focus. We brought the online store there in 2020, we will soon bring Apple retail there, so we’re putting a lot of emphasis on the market,” Cook said in response to an analyst question, adding, “We are, in essence, taking what we learned in China years ago and how we scale to China and bringing that to bear.”
Later on in the call, he said, “We actually did fairly well through Covid in India. And I’m even more bullish now on the other side of it, or hopefully on the other side of it. And that’s the reason why we’re investing there.”