Source: Apple

Apple opened a retail store, covering 20,000 square feet (about 1,858 square meters), in the financial capital Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex financial, arts, and entertainment district on Tuesday. This is the first retail location in India for the U.S. tech giant that has operation in the country for more than two decades, and mainly sold products through franchise-operated stores and its website.

Apple CEO Time Cook, along with Deirdre O'Brien, the senior vice president of Retail + People, inaugurated the first store and greeted the crowd of customers. This is Cook’s first trip in India since 2016, when his company started scale up operations in the country. He is set to attend the opening of another store in India’s capital New Delhi two days later.

Cook will fly to New Delhi to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, CNBC cited people familiar with the matter. Modi is eager to discuss Apple’s plan for further expansion and numbers of new jobs it will create in India, and also wants to learn challenges Cook is facing to ramp up production in different states across the country, according to the sources. Reuters learned that Cook will also meet Indian deputy IT minister during the visit. Neither of Modi’s office, Apple, or IT ministry commented on the news.

Prior to the first store opened, increasing reports suggested Apple is focusing more on India as a manufacturing base and a key market for iPhone.

Apple has already made about 5% to 7% of its production in India, and “If I am not mistaken, they are targeting to go up to 25% of their manufacturing, Piyush Goyal, the Commerce and Industry Minister, said in January.

Apple was said earlier this month to seek to make India a center to produce iPhones and accessories, Vietnam to assemble AirPods and Mac, Malaysia as a location for some Mac production, and Ireland to make a range of simpler products. Apple employees have been instructed to focus on sourcing additional parts and local production lines beyond China for new offerings coming in 2024, but the company still plans to maintain existing operations in China for concerns that the rapid capacity transition could trigger the government’s retaliation as well as local consumers’ backlash, according to the report.

The value of India-made iPhones tripled to more than $7 billion in the fiscal year ended March, and most of it, about $5 billion, was exported, almost quadrupling export value in the previous year, Bloomberg reported last week. It was reported that Apple now makes nearly 7% of iPhones in India, up from just 1% in 2021. The report said Apple could work to unprecedentedly produce the next generation of iPhone series in India at the same time as in China, and it could assemble a quarter of all iPhones in India by 2025, if the aggressive expansion trend of its suppliers, ranging from Foxconn Technology Group to Pegatron Corp., lasts. Revenue in India set a new record of nearly $6 billion in the past fiscal year, increasing almost 50% from a year ago, according to another report earlier this week.

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