One major reason for Apple not so keen in the Indian market is its limitation in the scalability to meet the market demand.
The OEMs that manufacture apple products have strong presence in China (like Foxconn) the labour & material cost works out Very cheap for Apple in China.
For Apple to start such an infrastructure in India and to maintain the supply chain with its suppliers of that scale, India doesn’t have the infrastructure in place or the framework to fall into their manufacturing ecosystem.Tax laws is the plaguing issue for all leading MNCs in the electronics sales (ex) Dell, HP etc
In the case of Samsung & Nokia, they have a strong supplier presence in India and also they have their own factories that manufacture the devices.
Apple doesn’t have such an scale to operate in India.
Operationally Apple will fail to compete with its current model by opening direct stores or building the distribution channels without proper backbone to support the market demand.The landing cost of the apple device will be too expensive and not affordable for the consumers to buy at that price.
The bottom line for Apple will be very thin. Fundamentally Apple doesn’t like to compete in a market place where they are not no:1, by all practical sense Apple’s stand on India…holds good from their perspective.
For apple to be successful in India, they need to invest a lot before looking for revenue growth or making it viable for Indian consumers.
Thoughts?
Cheers!
Gopi | co-founder smartas.in
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Rahul Ramchandani
Maybe. But according to me Apple’s distribution and supply with the cash pile they have can be scaled up pretty fast! [They have a cash pile more than all of the US government!]
It just is that they think Indians are more price concious and wouldn’t be the no 1 in this market. But this perception is changing rapidly within Apple too. See how quick iphone 4s and New Ipad came to India and recently a rumour was that Apple is planning to open retail stores in India.
Gopikrishna Kannan
Agree! certainly they can build a very strong supply chain inside India for the amount of cash pile they are sitting on. Perception should change!