What you need to know
- India's first Apple Store reportedly now has a location.
- It'll be a large, iconic store according to reports.
- The store is expected to open in September 2020.
Apple has made a decision on where it will open its first Apple Store in India, according to reports. The store will open in Mumbai's Maker Maxity mall which is located in the Bandra Kurla Complex, according to multiple sources who spoke with the outlet.
The store is expected to open in September of next year, with designs and layouts currently being put together by an Apple team that is already in the country. All fixtures and fittings will be imported, presumably to ensure the store has the same aesthetic as others around the globe. It's also set to be quite the size, too.
"This COCO (company-owned, company-operated) store will be at par with Apple stores in Hong Kong that are in the range of 20,000 to 25,000 sq ft," said a second person adding Apple has taken the mall space on a revenuesharing model with the shopping centre. "The Mumbai flagship store will be on three levels – one floor dedicated as experience centre, another floor for retailing and the top for service centre."
Apple, predictably, isn't saying much about any plans to open a store in India other than to say again that it is keen to provide a service to Indian customers.
"We love our customers in India and we're eager to serve them online and in-store with the same experience and care that Apple customers around the world enjoy," the Apple statement said. "We appreciate the support and hard work by Prime Minister Modi and his team to make this possible and we look forward to one day welcoming customers to India's first Apple retail store. It will take us some time to get our plans underway and we'll have more to announce at a future date."
We'll keep our ears to the ground for more information on what is sure to be an iconic store in the region. We'd expect it to closely follow the form of other recently opened or renovated stores, complete with all the Today at Apple events that come with that.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
