Apple is betting big on its production lines in India, and it also seems to be bullish about the overall growth of the country’s economy.
In its latest earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at length about why India represents one of the biggest opportunities the company sees anywhere in the world. His enthusiasm wasn’t hedged or diplomatic — it was unambiguous.
“Yeah. I think it’s a huge opportunity for us,” Cook said. “You know, we’ve been focused on this for a while. It’s the second-largest smartphone market in the world and the third-largest PC market.”
The scale of the opportunity is precisely what makes India so compelling to Cook — and the fact that Apple has barely scratched the surface. “Despite doing extremely well there for quite some time, we still have a modest share,” he acknowledged. “I think there’s that really speaks to the opportunity that we have.”
Cook’s optimism is also rooted in macroeconomic tailwinds. India’s growing middle class is a key part of Apple’s calculus. “There are a lot of people moving into the middle class there, and we’ve got some great products for them, both currently and coming,” he said. This is exactly the kind of demographic shift that has drawn global tech giants to expand aggressively in India, betting on the country’s consumption story playing out over the next decade.
Apple’s India push isn’t just about selling products — it’s about building a deep, lasting presence. The company has over 3,500 engineers at its Hyderabad development center alone, and recently opened a sprawling 15-floor office in Bengaluru that will house 1,200 employees. On the manufacturing side, Apple has been ramping up iPhone production in India — a move that has taken on greater strategic urgency given the ongoing geopolitical pressures on its China-heavy supply chain.
The data on customers, Cook argued, makes the case for India even stronger. “If you look at the majority of customers on all of our categories, from the iPhone to the Mac to the iPad to the Watch, are new to that product there. It speaks very well to growing the install base there.”
That install base, once established, feeds Apple’s increasingly important services business — a flywheel that the company is clearly counting on as hardware growth matures in more saturated markets.
India is also the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, a status it has built through deliberate policy choices including the government’s PLI (Production Linked Incentive) scheme, which has been instrumental in drawing Apple and its supplier ecosystem into domestic manufacturing.
Cook’s closing line left little room for ambiguity: “Net-net, I’m over the moon excited about India.”
For Apple, this isn’t cheerleading — it’s strategy. The company that once explained its deep manufacturing reliance on China in terms of irreplaceable skilled labor is now quietly but decisively building a second pillar in India. Whether India can match that depth of manufacturing expertise over time is an open question. But if Tim Cook’s conviction is any indication, Apple is willing to help build it.