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The Cheongdae Times Cub Reporter Jin-Hyung Cho

Apple opens its first Apple store in Mumbai, the financial center of India. Apple has been targeting the Indian market since 2020, starting online retail sales in India.

Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned the opening of Apple's Indian store in February 2020. At the time, Tim Cook said, "I'm not satisfied with leaving retail sales to a franchise partner," and "I'll open an Apple store in India next year." Originally, Apple planned to open an Apple Store in India in 2021, but it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The industry believes that Apple saw the potential of the Indian smartphone market and opened the store. India is the second largest smartphone market in the world with approximately 700 million smartphone users, and is considered one of the countries with high potential.

When Apple opened its first retail store in India, it signed a special lease to prevent major competitors from opening nearby stores. Companies competing with Apple in the market, such as IT services, laptops, and wearable devices, were not allowed to enter.

It is known that the companies that cannot enter the Apple Store include Korean companies such as LG along with major US big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Apple is also increasing its production in India recently to reduce its dependence on China. Taiwanese Foxconn, a partner of Apple, is also planning to set up a new production base in India, and recently started production of the iPhone 14 series in India. Last year, iPhone shipments made in India tripled from the previous year, and Apple aims to produce 25% of its iPhone production in India by 2025.

Last year, as trade and security friction between the US and China increased and tensions rose, Apple chose to reduce shipments from China.

Foxconn factory, an Apple supplier located in Zhengzhou, China, suffered chaos such as a large number of workers fleeing, which accelerated the dispersion of the production network.