“India is at a tipping point. You can just feel the vibrancy, the dynamism, the feeling that anything here is possible. And it’s so great to be a part of it. It feels so great to be back,” Cook told a TV channel Tuesday, on the second day of his second visit to India after 2016.
“So we’re trying to bring our best to Inda. We brought the online store a few years ago, we have brought the retail store, we’ll expand the retail presence on Thursday with a store in Delhi,” said the top executive of the Cupertino-based tech giant.
Cook is visiting India to launch two new Apple retail stores – one in Mumbai that he opened on Tuesday, and another in New Delhi, to be launched on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Cook is scheduled to meet senior ministers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, technology, telecom and railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and minister of state for IT, Rajeev Chandrashekar. He had met the PM on his previous visit to the country too.
Underlining India’s importance, Cook said that the country is a base of its manufacturing as well as a significant developer community. He said he was excited about India’s culture, the people, the vibrancy and the energy. He added that feels the country has more energy than he felt on his first visit.
“I am very bullish on AI. In fact, it’s at the root of so many of our products today. Like the Apple Watch. If you run an ECG, you are using artificial intelligence, machine learning,” the top executive said.His comment comes on heels of reported remarks by Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet and Google, who cautioned about the potential harmful effects of AI technology.
Market trackers believe branded stores will further strengthen the overall experience of being in an Apple ecosystem, with the company controlling the user experience end-to-end.
“We have seen many stories around the world of consumers sharing positive purchase experiences from Apple-branded stores and India will be no different,” said Tarun Pathak, research director, Counterpoint Research.
When asked if India needs a unique strategy, Cook said India has its own journey and culture, which you really have to understand to do well.
“It’s great to interphase with the artists and creators here. There is a huge Apple community in India,” he added.
India is home to 800 million mobile phone users with a potential to have more than a billion smartphone users in the next five years, with most users spending and upgrading to better and more expensive smartphones, becoming ‘mobile first’, Pathak said.
“Strategically, Apple has an opportunity to target tens of millions of smartphones in sales every year from 6 million units currently, due to growing importance of a good smartphone and increasing percentage of upper middle class in India,” Pathak said.
Apple sells more than 50 million iPhones annually in markets like China and the US individually. India has the potential to reach that scale from domestic demand in the coming years, with Apple having the opportunity to cross sell its other products and services, he added.
