Will Apple open retail showrooms in India?

By: Emiley J

It is still a million dollar question that many people and companies in India have. Whether Apple will open its retail showrooms in India? The current policy in India is that such international companies will have to source a minimum of 30% of the products in India for opening retail shops in India.

Apple Inc is already sourcing some of its software from India. If this is considered as part of the minimum required 30% then Apple can open its stores in India, said some Apple employees who does not want to be named. Until February last year, Apple has spend more than USD 100 million on Software development and maintenance from Indian Sofware Companies. At that time it was highly speculated that Apple is going to open its store in India which was denied by Tim Cook. He also mentioned that although it will be great to open its stores in India, as there are many opportunities in other parts of the world, India will be a market in the near future. These are some of the reasons for that decision.

When Apple launched its iTunes online store recently, Hongkong, Taiwan and 10 other asian countries were included but not China and India. This was due to digital IP rights policies in these two countries.
Another reason is that in India iPhone usage is much less compared to other countries. In the smart phones market Samsung is the leader in India with a market share of 51% where as iPhone is just 1.2% although it is increasing.
In 2012 first two quarters, only 100,000 iPhones were sold in India whereas in China in just one quarter it sold 2.3 million iphones.
ITC reports that SmartPhone usage in India is just 2.5% which will only grow to 8.5% by year 2016
In other countries Apple ties with other mobile service companies and outlets to sell its phones, whereas in India many mobile shops prefer to market Samsung

If some of these issues gets resolved and the market conditions improve, then Apple may come to India soon, otherwise it looks like it will take some time.