Apple Inc next month is poised to open an online store for the first time in the fast-growing smartphone market of India, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, taking advantage of a relaxation of once-strict prohibitions against foreign direct retail.
The online store should be ready for operations just ahead of the festive Dussehra-Diwali spending season, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing confidential plans.
The iPhone maker, which lobbied New Delhi for years to get around regulations that force companies such as Apple to source 30 percent of components locally, had originally planned to start online sales within months after the government relaxed the rule last year. Those plans were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
India’s 1.3 billion people represent a large, under-served smartphone market that is becoming an increasingly important focus for Apple even as the pandemic raged this year.
The company, which has just made history by surpassing US$2 trillion in market value, is boosting investments in the South Asian nation to reduce its dependence on China both as a market and manufacturing base amid escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The Cupertino, California-based company also plans to open a second brick-and-mortar store in the technology hub of Bangalore, following an outlet in Mumbai that is to be its first physical location in the country, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Its first physical store is to open next year in the plush Mumbai neighborhood of BKC, and it has already scouted more than 46,000m2 of space right in the heart of Bangalore near Minsk Square, named after its sister city in Belarus.
Apple did not respond to an e-mail seeking comments on its renewed retail push in India.
“Apple’s made-in-India strategy plus the lower cost iPhone SE will increase traction,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anand Srinivasan said. “They just can’t compete for Android-like high volume with their prices.”
Apple currently offers its devices in India through stores owned by franchise partners and via online platforms, including Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc-owned Flipkart Online Retails Services Pvt.
Selling through its own stores and via its Web site could help the company control branding and win customer loyalty while leveling the field with competitors such as China’s OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co (萬普拉斯科技) and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.
Alongside the expansion of its retail presence in India, Apple has been assembling its newest handsets — the iPhone SE and the iPhone 11 — in the country through its manufacturing partners Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Wistron Corp (緯創).
Another assembly partner, Pegatron Corp (和碩), is to set up its first plant in India.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to