Apple sets its sights on India with Airtel deal

Apple has partnered with India’s second-largest telecoms firm in a move that will bolster the company’s presence in the world’s most populous country.

The tech giant is looking to boost revenue globally from its service offering, including apps, payments, media, and – as part of the deal with Bharti Airtel – by offering free music and video streaming through its Wynk app to some of their 281 million customers.

Significant quantities of Apple’s manufacturing happen in India as the company has been steadily diversifying its supply chain away from China. Despite this, its devices make up just 6% of the country’s 690 million smartphones. Apple is looking to expand its user base across the country.

Speaking to Reuters, Nitesh Kripalani, former head of Amazon Prime Video in India, said that this move “speaks of Apple’s ambitions for India. The strategy is a time-tested method to catapult presence in markets it considers important.”

Currently, Airtel offers premium Wynk subscriptions to around seven million users, however, a telecom industry source told Reuters that only a fraction use the app. Apple Music will become available to these users and Wynk will eventually close.

Global technology market research firm Counterpoint Research co-founder Neil Shah said that while Apple Music does contain some Bollywood and regional-language songs, its library is still smaller than Spotify’s.

The music streaming service has around three million paid users in India, while competitors lag behind. Gaana has 1.4 million, Wynk has around 500,000, and Apple Music has 200,000.

This data suggests that only around 7.5 million users pay for audio streaming apps in India, compared to 185 million who use ad-supported or even ad-free apps.

Apple TV+ is a comparatively small player in the video streaming industry in India, with less than a million subscribers, compared to market leader Disney+ Hotstar, which has 38 million. Many of Apple’s rivals have more Hindi content, and even some regional-language content, whereas Apple TV+ is more known for its English language content.

Featured image credit: generated with Ideogram

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