Apple Inc is set to open its first official retail store in Mumbai, the iPhone maker said on Wednesday.
The Cupertino, California-based company launched an online retail store in India in 2020. Its 2021 plans for the launch of an offline retail store in the country were delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Apple products have been sold in India for years on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc’s Flipkart as well as through resellers.
India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market, with nearly 700 million smartphone users.
Some products in Apple’s catalogue, including iPhones, are assembled in India by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturers Foxconn and Wistron Corp.
Around $9 billion worth of smartphones were exported from India between April 2022 and February this year, and iPhones accounted for more than 50 per cent of that, according to the India Cellular and Electronics Association.
Last month, Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn has won an order to make AirPods for Apple Inc and plans to build a factory in India to produce the wireless earphones, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The deal will see Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker and assembler of around 70 per cent of all iPhones, become an AirPod supplier for the first time and underlines efforts by the key Apple supplier to further diversify production away from China. AirPods are currently made by a range of Chinese suppliers.
Meanwhile, Apple Incis eliminating a small number of roles within its corporate retail teams, BloombergNews reported on Monday, citing people familiar withthe matter.
The layoffs would impact what Apple calls its development and preservation teams, the report said, adding that the number of positions being eliminated could not be ascertained and was likely very small.
The iPhone maker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report.
Worries about an economic downturn because of rising interest rates have sparked a series of mass job cuts across corporate America in recent months.
Facebook-parent Meta Platforms last month said it would cut 10,000 jobs this year, making it the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs.