By Srinath Sridharan and Shailesh Haribhakti
Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent India visit was not just about Apple’s marketing blitzkrieg for the opening of the two Apple Stores. Cook is likely perfectly aware that the Indian ‘techade’ offers Apple—as much as any other global tech giant—multiple long-term strategic strengths. India offers Apple a chance at global tech dominance in the years to come.
For many years, Apple has been rumoured to be working on multiple ‘enhanced-reality’ products, including Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). At the same time, Apple is being expected to have its own AI product, while its competitors, Microsoft and Google, lead for now. For bolstering its prowess in these segments, Apple needs a breakthrough idea—and a large pool of talent as much as fresh thinking around AI for the upcoming range of products and services. Its recent history is of how it killed Nokia and BlackBerry, by killing the concept of phone keyboard itself.
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India offers it a ready pool of talented engineers, scientists, and technologists in emerging technologies, including AR-VR, Web3 and AI. Apple’s India manufacturing is in line with “Atmanirbhar Bharat” that promotes indigenous manufacturing, and creates local jobs, contributes to the economy, and reduces the trade deficit. India does now offer better protection and respect for Intellectual Property Rights than, say, a China. The country has made significant progress in reducing patent pendency and increasing patent examination efficiency. It has streamlined the trademark registration procedures and expedited trademark examination, leading to shorter processing times for applications. Apple already employs 1,00,000 in India, and wants to double this number. All of this will help Apple protect its ideas, concepts, designs, and enable it to be on the cutting edge.
Augmented reality
As global technology companies continue to push the boundaries of innovation, the race for dominance in the AR and metaverse spaces will become increasingly competitive. Apple and Meta are two major players in this arena, each with their own strengths and strategies. Apple has a strong track record of integrating hardware and software seamlessly, creating a unified and cohesive user experience. It has a large developer community that can leverage Apple’s ARKit, a robust AR development framework, to create innovative AR applications for various use cases, from gaming and entertainment to productivity and education.
In this entire emerging technology journey, governments themselves can be meaningful catalysts—quite like what India has showcased so far. India is the only country where the government has worked as much as its private innovators in building and refining the wide array of digital public goods on offer. Such an attractive proposition will help Apple work with Indian talent and collaborators, partners, ecosystem enablers, developer communities in creating not just digital solutions that can be commercialised, but also hardware that can work with these. It is simply about creating new markets where none exist today.
Cook should want to prepare Indian consumers for the Apple Watch, AR-VR face wear, BCI chips, quantum based encryption in a ChatGPT-ready Apple phone. Well, that is for starters for the next decade. With so much emerging technology getting ready for commercial launch, the Indian market—with 1/6th of world’s population—is one that Apple can’t afford to miss.
Apple, in general, has shied away from taking the lead in new technology segments. It has tended to wait for proof of concept and consumer acceptance before diving into commercialisation of revolutionary product ideas. For example, Apple was not the first to bring a smartphone to the market. And tablets had been introduced in 1989, while the iPad came much later. Only once mp3 players started ruling consumer engagement did Apple work on the iPod. Similarly, the perception that Apple is lagging behind on AI even as Google and Microsoft are taking confident strides might prove deceptive in the long-run, considering Apple might just leapfrog, with a wow-offering, just as it has done in the past.
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Apple can’t afford to reduce its manufacturing in China all too quickly, as it is a large consumer market for the company apart from being a key link in its entire semiconductor research, testing and manufacturing value chain. By manufacturing in India, however, Apple de-risks its China dependency in manufacturing. The strategic appeal to the Indian sensibility through “Designed in California. Made in India” could work its charm elsewhere in the globe given current geopolitical scenario. That’s a great alternative that India offers Apple, in terms of reshaping of its global sourcing and manufacturing strategy for the next decade.
The Indian market, with its low-cost access to internet and data services, is more keypad literate. Its consumers’ hunger for services offered on app stores as well as streaming services is an attractive proposition for Apple. No wonder Apple has been expanding its portfolio of services, including Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and Apple News+, among others. It has also been localising its services and language-content to cater to the Indian consumers’ preferences.
No other country or single market offers over half a billion youngsters with increasing disposable income to spend on Apple products. For the next 30 years, India’s demography will remain young and productive. A hard statistic to beat. Cook would want Indian consumers who are eager technology adopters to buy more of his devices and services, and regularly.
He would also want to work with Indian business partners to enable solutions for not just those who can afford Apple pricing but also for the marginalised communities. Apple, an entity that fiercely prides itself for its data security and data governance, is better placed in terms of working with local regulations. Compare this with a Meta or Twitter, which have faced regulatory and political challenges globally and in India. Apple will simply want to be the next go-to technology provider. Time will tell if Cook returns regularly to India to showcase more commitment to the market, including launching India-first offerings. That would indicate if India is indeed Apple’s Next Frontier and whether its embrace of the Land of Opportunity is for the long haul.
Sridharan in a policy researcher & corporate advisor and Haribhakti serves on many corporate boards as independent director