The much-awaited launch of Apple’s first offline store in India will be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple was supposed to launch the store in Mumbai and its CEO Tim Cook had earlier announced this will be the company's first retail store in 2021.
Apple has the backing of a strong franchise retail network across India and the launch of an online store has helped immensely in reaching the customer base which is beyond its retail network. In January, Cook revealed that Apple had sold more than a million devices in the country for the first time.
“If you take India for example, we doubled our business last quarter compared to a year ago,” he told analysts while qualifying that Apple’s “absolute level of business there is still quite low relative to the size of the opportunity.”
The online store got huge traction as the country has seen COVID-induced lockdown in 2020 and in the Q1 2021 earnings call, Cook confirmed this underlines the great reaction the online store had got and how he looked forward to the launch of offline retail.
Apple’s most affordable iPhone SE is the main reason behind the increase in numbers along with the older iPhone 11 and the new iPhone 12 series. The CyberMedia Research report revealed that Apple had seen 140% growth in the Apple-June quarter powered by iPhone 11 which accounted for 60% of the shipments.
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