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Apple plans to start selling online in India this September

  • Apple currently offers its devices in India through stores owned by franchise partners and via online platforms like Amazon.com and Flipkart
  • The US technology giant’s first bricks-and-mortar Apple Store in India will open next year in Mumbai

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A salesman uses his iPhone at a mobile phone store in New Delhi, India. The country’s 1.3 billion people represents a large, underserved smartphone market that is becoming an increasingly important focus for Apple. Photo: Reuters
Bloomberg
Apple is poised to open an online store for the first time in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market, next month, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, as the iPhone maker takes advantage of a relaxation of once-strict prohibitions against foreign direct retail.
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The online store will be ready for operations just ahead of the festive Dussehra-Diwali spending season, according to the person, who asked not to be named discussing confidential plans.

Apple, which lobbied New Delhi for years to get around regulations that force foreign companies to source 30 per cent 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 coronavirus pandemic.

India’s 1.3 billion people represents a large, underserved smartphone market that is becoming an increasingly important focus for Apple even as the pandemic raged this year.

Apple, which has just made history by surpassing US$2 trillion in market value, is boosting investments in the South Asian country 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 bricks-and-mortar store in the technology hub of Bangalore, following an outlet in Mumbai that will be its first physical location in the country, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

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