Months earlier, the Internet was swarming with rumours about Apple’s Tim Cook’s plans to visit India. We’re past that now and Cook has safely landed in the country. But the primary objective of his visit is still pending and the CEO will be hoping to achieve it soon. According to reports, Cook will be sitting down with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend.
While we cannot completely predict the whole story behind Cook’s latest visit to the subcontinent, we can say for sure that Apple will be hoping to boost iPhone sales in the country. According to Apple’s latest revenue reports, India saw a 56 percent increase in sales making it the only positive growing market for the iPhone. Judging the potential in the country, Cook plans to bring in many new schemes to boost iPhone sales even further.
The company has already made two big announcements– Apple’s first development centre in India, Hyderabad and a “design and development accelerator“ in Bangalore. This goes hand-in-hand with Modi’s ‘Make In India’ program. The company is also likely to start building iPhones in India, in an attempt to lower the prices and bolster the sales. Last year, we saw Taiwanese firm Foxconn which is the company that assembles iPhones announce plans to invest $5 billion in a plant for multiple brands in the western state of Maharashtra. These plans aren’t absolute yet, so we can only wait to know what the company is planning.
The CEO may also try to use Modi’s enthusiasm for technology to slide in the plan of refurbished iPhones selling in India, yet again. This request was already denied by the Indian government twice and it will be interesting to see the outcome this time around.
Apple currently holds in just about 2 percent of the Indian mobile market share. The Cupertino giant hopes to get these numbers up by the end of this year. This is mainly because of the premium pricing of the iPhones which most Indians either cannot afford or do not want to invest. The refurbished smartphones scheme could take Apple to selling four million units in 2016 in India, according to analysts.
