Apple Inc said it had plans to open four more retail stores in India and will start local manufacturing of iPhone 16 Pro models as part of its deepening presence in the world's second-largest smartphone market.

Apple intends to expand retail stores in Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi-NCR, and Mumbai, following the company's first two Indian outlets that were opened last year in Mumbai and New Delhi.

"We are excited about building our teams as we prepare to open additional stores in India because we are inspired by the ingenuity and enthusiasm of our customers across this country," Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's senior vice president of Retail, said in a statement. "We can't wait for them to have even more opportunities to discover and shop for our amazing products and services, and to connect with our extraordinary, knowledgeable team members.".

She would not specify launch dates for new stores.

Apple also said it has started manufacturing all variants of the iPhone 16, including Pro, in India. It had started making iPhones in the country with the SE model back in 2017.

These are part of a set of steps to reduce dependence on China and tap India's growing market for mobile handsets.

Apple's push to shift iPhone manufacturing to India is, though, moving slower than anticipated, J.P. Morgan analysts said in a note last month. The bank estimates that the Indian production of the iPhone now accounts for 10-15% of total production. The world's no. one iPhone-maker briefly crossed double-digit market share in the Indian smartphone market last year but has since fallen back into the single digits.

The bank has forecast that the company will reach 20-25% of total iPhone production in India by 2027, compared to a 2022 projection for this level by 2025.
iPhone assembly margins at Indian plants are also currently lower "due to sub-optimal operating scale and the early stage of the learning curve, which have more than offset the lower labor cost (almost 25-50% of China's), the investment bank said".

Apple's business in India, the world's most populous nation, is going in the right direction after all. According to Morgan Stanley, the iPhone maker's sales in India soared 42% year-over-year in 2023 to $8.7 billion earlier this year. The shipments of iPhones in India increased by 39% year-over-year in 2023 to 9.2 million units, which made it iPhone's fifth largest smartphone market.
India's iPhone business in 2023 was larger than any standalone country in the European Union, Morgan Stanley added.