Apple, the world’s biggest electronics maker, has its eyes set on India. At a time when the company is working up aggressive sales targets for the market and multiplying its distribution network exponentially, the company on Friday came calling at the government’s doors, expressing willingness to up its commitment and investments.
John Reynolds, Apple’s head of compliance for EMEIA region (Europe, Middle East, India, Africa), met telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and gave an overview of the company’s operations in the market. Apple sells its entire bouquet of products in India and these include the iPhones, iPads and iPods. The company is believed to have topped $1 billion in sales last fiscal and has fixed aggressive targets as iPhones further strengthen their share in the premium devices market.
Prasad asked Apple officials, which included EMEIA region’s government affairs head Ali Khanafer, to look at having a research and development (R&D) set-up in India. Importantly, the minister apprised the company’s officials about the incentives that the government has laid out to boost local manufacturing of electronics.
Sources told TOI that the government is looking to woo Apple’s key manufacturing supplier, Foxconn, into the Indian market and high-level parleys on this front have already been initiated. Foxconn is a Taiwanese contract manufacturing major and is one of the biggest maker of Apple’s devices.
The government is understood to have told the Apple executives that additional support could be extended to the company and its suppliers in case they finalize plans to manufacture in India.
“I told them that India is one of the biggest and most high-potential market for electronic devices. Mobile connections in India are nearing 100 crore and we have over 300 million internet subscribers. It is booming in here,” Prasad said.
