India challenging market in short-term: Apple CEO Tim Cook

Describing India as a "challenging market in the short-term", Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to make a foray into the Indian market with "all of our might" through its retail stores and manufacturing capability.

Cook, during the fiscal year 2019 second quarter earnings conference call Tuesday, said that while India is a very important market in the long-term it is also a very challenging market in the short-term.

"I think India is a very important market in the long-term. It's a challenging market in the short-term. But we're learning a lot," he said.

"We have made some adjustments in India and we've seen preliminarily some better results there. Everything that we do, does advise everything we do in the future so we try to learn the best we can and fold that into our thinking. And we'll obviously do that with this as well," he said.

Last month, Apple dropped the selling price of iPhone XR by up to 22 per cent in the face of stiff competition in the premium smartphone segment in the India.

Apple has started manufacturing in India which he said is very important to be able to serve the market in a "reasonable way."
When asked about the Android operating system dominating the Indian market and Apple's comparatively less market share in the country, Cook said "it doesn't bother me that it's primarily Android business at the moment because that just means there's a lot of opportunity there."