A phone with an 'i'.

"Apple opened its first store in Mumbai, India. Located at the Jio World Drive mall in the Bandra Kurla Complex area, the store is the first of the two outlets Apple to open in India. Apple CEO Tim Cook was at the store to officially welcome the customers as the doors opened at 11 am. TOI. "Tech giant Apple has clocked in nearly $6 billion in sales in India in the year through March 2023, according to a Bloomberg report.This, compared with a revenue of USD 4.1 billion in the year to March 2022, translates to a revenue jump of about 50 percent." TN. "Apple has assembled more than USD 7 billion worth of iPhones in India in the last fiscal year, the report said." "Apple has very little market share in India," which is dominated by brands such as Samsung and Xiaomi. CNBC. According to Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, "Smartphones priced above $400 now account for 10% of total volumes of handsets shipped versus 4% before the pandemic." But they account for 35% of market revenue. "Apple shipped about 6.5 million iPhones in India in 2022, compared to around 50 million each year in both the US and China, according to Counterpoint Research." Why the euphoria? "ET in June 2016 had reported that Apple had no intentions to open its stores in India if the Central government didn't exempt it from sourcing materials locally." "In August 2019, India finally amended the rules for single-brand licence holders to include exports and contract manufacturing to be counted in the mandatory 30% local sourcing norm over a period of five years." Apple's change of heart may have been precipitated more by China's zero Covid policy which disrupted global supply chains over two years. In May 2022, "China's lockdowns to contain Covid have snarled operations at the world's largest port in Shanghai and stalled activity in major cities, affecting the supply chains of businesses from Tesla Inc to Apple Inc." ET. In November 2022, "Protests have erupted at the world's biggest iPhone factory in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, according to footage circulated widely online." BBC. "Footage shared on a livestreaming site showed workers shouting: 'Defend out rights! Defend our rights!'." "Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm, is Apple's main subcontractor and its Zhengzhou plant assembles more iPhones than anywhere else in the world." Also, the rich people of India have become much richer in recent years because of a policy of negative real interest rates (The Hindu) which transferred wealth from savers to borrowers. "The pandemic has left a clear split running down the middle of India's consumer demand." ET. A survey by PwC found that "63% of Indian consumers are tightening expenditure on non-essential goods and services, while 74% of the Indian respondents said they were worried about their personal financial situation." That still leaves an awful lot of people who can throw over Rs 70,000 (ET), on a phone. A virus doesn't distinguish between rich and poor. Policies do.