Apple CEO Tim Cook said his company was growing its marketing capability in India.
By Nandagopal Rajan
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said the pricing adjustments in India has resulted in “preliminarily some better results”, but it was not going to be easy in the short-term. Speaking to analysts and reporters after the Q2 results where Apple showed quarterly revenue of $58 billion, a decline of 5 per cent from the year-ago quarter, Cook said while India is a very important market in the long-term it is also a very challenging market in the short-term.
“But we are learning a lot. We have started manufacturing there (in India) which is very important to be able to serve the market in a reasonable way,” Cook said, adding how Apple was growing this capability in India.
Cook said he would “like to place retail stores there” and is “working with the government to seek approval to do that”. The Apple CEO said the company plans on “going in there with sort of all of our might”. India’s policy on single brand retail makes it tough for Apple Stores to be set up in the country.
Cook also spoke about the developer accelerator in Bengaluru and said he was “happy with some of the things coming out of there”.
“It’s a long-term play. It’s not something that’s going to be on overnight huge business. But I think the growth potential is phenomenal,” Cook said. He also underlined that Apple was not bothered that India was at the moment primarily an Android business. “…That just means there’s a lot of opportunity there.”
In the earnings release, Cook said the results showed an installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices. “We delivered our strongest iPad growth in six years, and we are as excited as ever about our pipeline of innovative hardware, software and services. We’re looking forward to sharing more with developers and customers at Apple’s 30th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.”