Apple's Chief Rival Has a Cautionary Tale for India

tech.hindustantimes.com:

In July 2008, Apple Inc. opened its first retail store in China, marking the start of a meteoric rise in the country. Fifteen years later, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is offering the same blessing to India. It's obvious that the world's most-valuable company should hang out its shingle in what may already be the globe's most populous country, yet there's a cautionary tale not only from its time in China, but from its chief rival.

When hundreds of people queued up for the opening of that first store in Beijing, the nation was barely a blip on Apple's revenue radar. By the next financial year, ending September 2009, China plus Hong Kong combined brought in a mere $769 million in revenue, accounting for 1.8% of the global total. Within another two years, the figure jumped to $12 billion, or 11.5%.

India is at that point now. Over the past year through March 31, Apple's sales in the country climbed around 50% to almost $6 billion, Bloomberg News reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter. That's an impressive jump given the global slump in gadget sales across all categories. Yet it's still only 1.6% of company-wide revenue, and around 8% the scale of what the iPhone maker currently gets in Greater China.

In opening two stores this week — the first in Mumbai followed by another in New Delhi — Cook's move could be seen as either driving business in an important market, or simply jumping on the bandwagon of growth that already exists. There certainly seems to be no downside given that he's also pushed suppliers such as Foxconn Technology Group, Wistron Corp. and Pegatron Corp. to ramp up output in the country. While local manufacturing avoids import taxes imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government,