Roger Fingas
Apple Pay is in development for India, senior Apple executive Eddy Cue revealed in an interview published on Monday — though there's no indication of when it will go live.
"We're working on it, but no date to announce at this point," Cue explained to Livemint. "We like to announce a date that we know is a 100 percent."
Cue noted that Apple Pay has been difficult to scale up globally, and the company is dealing with one market at a time. Each launch involves negotiations with local banks and card issuers, some of which have been hesistant to sign up given the small fee Apple claims from each transaction.
At over 1.3 billion people, India is the world's second-most populous country, making it a critical destination for Apple Pay. The iPhone does control just a small fraction of the local smartphone market however, which may explain why the company has concentrated on places like China first.
Apple is separately working on establishing iPhone production and retail presence in India, which could boost iPhone sales.
Cue also spoke to Livemint about the pace of Apple innovation, denying that there's been any slowdown, while simultaneously warning that people shouldn't expect radical changes every year.
"When you think of the products that we've built over time, you own a lot of them," he said. "And you just assume that every year was a new product. But it wasn't. You can't do revolutionary new products, every two months or six months or whatever. They take time."
The company's next big milestones are the iPhone X — with Face ID and an edge-to-edge OLED display — and the HomePod, a Siri-equipped smartspeaker that will take on products from Amazon, Google, and Sonos.
Charles Martin
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9 Comments
i like the full question and answer:
Q: Apple historically has a track record of coming out with industry-defining products, whether it’s the Mac or iPhone or iPod. But over the past decade, there’s a been perception that the pace of innovation and the pace at which Apple has come out with game-changing, breakthrough products has slowed somewhat. What do you have to say about that?
A: No way! First of all, the iPhone is 10 years old. That is the last decade. The iPad came after that and the Watch came after that. So, I disagree vehemently with that and I think we’ve been incredibly innovative. That doesn’t even take into account the work that has been done on the Mac, iOS and MacOS, from that standpoint where I think we’ve led the market. When you think of the products that we’ve built over time, you own a lot of them. And you just assume that every year was a new product. But it wasn’t. You can’t do revolutionary new products, every two months or six months or whatever. They take time.
...it’s a nice reminder that these amazing pieces of technology we take for granted don’t pop out of a clamshell fully formed, that they take lots of work and time to produce and iteratively improve upon.
I think a lot of people (especially media outlets) forget the Apple before 2007, or simply aren't aware...there wasn't really much to be said except iPod updates and minimal Mac updates with the exception of the transition from PPC to Intel. The iPhone came along and it wasn't even a smash hit immediately....I don't think it was until Apple decided to open their own App Store that the iPhone started to become a runaway success. I don't really consider the iPad a smash hit...it hasn't really ever taken off like some make it out to, yet they want to call Apple Watch a failure when I see Apple selling a lot of watches and only more in the future. I don't really care what others think, but I think Apple truly did revolutionize the watch. They took this device that basically just told the date and time and made it do so much more. Its getting people healthier, controls your music, your living room, etc....even saving lives! What watch did this before Apple Watch?
There's a lot of expectations on Apple and I'm glad they take their time to release something when its ready to be released, even if it means they're not first to release a particular technology. Sure, when its released its not perfect but nothing ever is...the original iPhone certainly wasn't perfect, but for its time it was something like nobody had ever imagined a phone could do. The iPad wasn't perfect, but again, it was doing things you couldn't imagine a tablet device could do.
I don't think some media outlets have a clue what it takes to get a product from idea to market and be successful. Its not an overnight thing...not even an annual thing. Maybe they think that just because Apple can release a new phone every year it can be done, but they forget the foundation is already there for a new phone every year and every year there's brand new technology that goes into that phone. Just because the design doesn't change, doesn't mean there isn't new technology inside it.
"If you think it's difficult, it shall be."
The current Apple is thinking, that's the difference.