Tim Cook’s India visit may really be about Apple
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My view is that Cook’s visit to India was not really about the past but about the future – and that means not so much about the iPhone as about Apple TV. Cook made mild noises about Apple TV in response to questions and spoke of bringing Apple Pay, its digital wallet service, to India. I think they are much bigger to the company’s future in India because, as Cook made it clear enough, Apple is not really into making an “affordable” iPhone and is in fact looking at the high end of the market.
Cook says Apple is eyeing India for “a thousand years” – and that means the game is not really about smartphones but about convergence as a full experience in which bandwidth, apps and devices come together to create new “ Wow!” experiences for customers. In the US, it could mean smart ways to ride cars with Apple technology. In the India, it could well be about new ways to watch TV because there is an under-served high-end smart TV market waiting to be wooed. Apple’s famous rival Samsung has just waded in.
Imagine a future in which four members of an Indian family are watching a video show together, and talking to each other – only, they are sitting in different continents, which is now quite common for India’s well-heeled. How about their talking to each other on the show using a messenger app?