William Gallagher
Apple's lease for its Apple BKC store in Mumbai reportedly includes a specific list of 22 competing brands that it will not allow to have any advertising or retail locations nearby.
India's The Economic Times is reporting that Apple has stipulated a no-go exclusive area around its new store in the Reliance Jio World Drive Mall. It's curiously similar to a report about Apple's new office space in Bengaluru, where the owners have agreed to bar 12 rivals including Microsoft and Netflix.
In the new deal, the lease agreement for the Apple BKC store reportedly specifies that the named rivals not be allowed to have stores in the mall, nor have advertising displayed. Of the specified competitors, 21 of the reported 22 specified firms have been revealed.
- Amazon
- Bose
- Dell
- Devialet
- Foxconn
- Garmin
- Hitachi
- HP
- HTC
- IBM
- Intel
- Lenovo
- LG
- Microsoft
- Next
- Panasonic
- Sony
- Toshiba
Also, unless one of them is the so-far unreported 22nd competing brand listed, there are some curious exceptions. Most significantly, there is no Samsung on the list, nor Spotify — but there is Apple's major iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn.
Apple's similar list around its new Bengaluru office space does list both Samsung and Spotify. But it only lists 11 competitors, of which only three are on the store's apparent list.
Those are Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet, Google's owner. Other firms barred from around the office but not on the store's list include Xiaomi, Huawei, Baidu, and Netflix.
According to The Economic Times, Apple's lease on the store is for 11 years. Apple is reported to initially be paying around $51,300 per month, plus 2% revenue share for the next 26 months, rising to 2.5% thereafter.
That rental gets Apple a minimum of 20,800 square feet of space. The lease includes a 15% rent escalation every three years, which is the same arrangement Apple has with the owner of its new Bengaluru office space.
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30 Comments
Weird that Apple feels so easily threatened these days. My local Apple Store was right above a Microsoft store for years. Back then, that just served to visually demonstrate the huge difference in consumer attention between the two.
From 'walled gardens' to 'walled malls'.
I might be able to get my head around them not wanting competitors next door or opposite, but not in the same mall/shopping centre is stretching things - a lot.
It's a shame that the company doing the leasing seems to be accepting the conditions.
... will the anti competition lawyers start their engines ...?
Has Apple become a bully corporation, vs simply pursuit of excellence ...?
There is a nearby shopping mall that has a Panera and an independent cake shop. I was in the cake shop one day and they told me that when they opened that a Panera representative came over to tell them that Panera had an exclusive contract regarding the sale of certain bakery items at that mall.