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NEW DELHI — Apple Inc. opened its first flagship store in India in a much-anticipated launch Tuesday that highlights the company’s growing aspirations to expand in the country it also hopes to turn into a potential manufacturing hub.
The company’s CEO Tim Cook posed for photos with a few of the 100 or so Apple fans who had lined up outside the sprawling 20,000-square-foot store in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, its design inspired by the iconic black-and-yellow cabs unique to the city. A second store will open Thursday in the national capital, New Delhi.
“India has such a beautiful culture and an incredible energy, and we’re excited to build on our long-standing history,” Cook said in a statement earlier.
The tech giant has been operating in India for more than 25 years, selling its products through authorized retailers and the website it launched a few years ago. But regulatory hurdles and the pandemic delayed its plans to open a flagship store.
The new stores are a clear signal of the company’s commitment to invest in India, the second-largest smartphone market in the world where iPhone sales have been ticking up steadily, said Jayanth Kolla, analyst at Convergence Catalyst, a tech consultancy. The stores show “how much India matters to the present and the future of the company,” he added.
For the Cupertino, California-based company, India’s sheer size makes the market especially encouraging.
About 600 million of India’s 1.4 billion people have smartphones, “which means the market is still under-penetrated and the growth prospect is huge,” said Neil Shah, vice president of research at technology market research firm Counterpoint Research.
Between 2020 and 2022, the Silicon Valley company has gained some ground in the smartphone market in…
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