India minister says Apple will at least double local investment in the next three years

Tim Cook (far right) at the opening of Apple Saket (source: Apple)

In the week that Apple opened its first two Apple Stores in India, analysts have already predicted that Apple has a long-term plan to dominate the smartphone market in the country.

According to Reuters, the country's officials also expect Apple to continue its increasing focus on India. During Tim Cook's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he also spoke with Rajeev Chandrasekhar, deputy minister for information technology.

"I am very confident that this Apple-India partnership has a lot of headroom for investments, growth, exports and jobs," Chandrasekhar told Reuters, " doubling and tripling over coming years."

For his part, Tim Cook has said this week that Apple is "committed to growing and investing across the country."

The two new retail stores, Apple BKC in Mumbai and Apple Saket in New Delhi, come more than two decades after Apple began opening Apple Stores. Customers have been able to buy from the online Apple Store, but only since September 2020.

Wedbush recently reported that until now, Apple has only "tangentially" pursued sales in India, and earns around $6 billion or 2% of its global income from there.

"That dynamic will be changing as Apple is now aggressively looking at India from both a production and retail expansion over the coming years," continued the analysts, "that we believe will be a strategic poker move for Cupertino that could ramp annual revenue to $20 billion by 2025 in India."