iPhone manufacturer Apple has filed an application with the government to open its own stores in India. The development comes after the government relaxed sourcing norms for foreign companies seeking to sell single brands in India.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September, and evinced interest in expanding its manufacturing base in India. Apple currently has 24 stores in China, out of 460 globally owned outlets.
The government is examining Apple’s proposal, but sources said that the company has not indicated how much investment they are planning to make in opening retail stores in India. Apple mostly uses resellers in India for its products. Redington and Ingram Micro are Apple’s main domestic distributors.
The company, which may be struggling due to slowing economic growth in its parent country United States and one of the largest markets China, finds a great opportunity in India with the growing middle class.
In July, the company had said that its growth in India was over 90 per cent. Apple’s sales in the country topped $1 billion for the first time in the fiscal year ending March 2015.
Apple sells iPhones, iPads and Macs in India. Last year, the government had relaxed norms for single-brand retailers saying they did not need to procure 30 per cent of a product’s inputs locally for retailing high-technology goods. That paved the way for Apple, which makes most of its devices in China.
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