“Apple is looking at India as an investment destination, in addition to pushing the sales of its products in the country,” Thomas K. Thomas reports for The Hindu. “In his first ever interaction with an Indian media organisation, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said the facilities announced for Bengaluru and Hyderabad were only the beginning of what’s to come.”
“Asked if Apple would consider manufacturing iPhones here, Mr. Cook said, ‘We are looking at India as a partner across (segments), not just for any one area. Manufacturing is something we will logically look at,'” Thomas reports. “On the controversy over pre-owned phones, he said he would urge the Centre to come to an agreement. ‘If you think about automobiles, brands like Lexus and Mercedes have been selling certified pre-owned cars. We have this programme in the U.S. and in most parts of the world. When they are sold, they are sold with warranty, just like a new product. We would never sell a product that we didn’t think was right,’ he said.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s Certified Refurbished products are of the highest quality.
“Mr. Cook said he was not chasing market share in India but wanted to partner with telecom operators to enhance the quality of services,” Thomas reports. “‘We are in India for the next thousand years. Our horizon is very long. We are focussed on best, not most. So it doesn’t bother me that we don’t have top market share,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s nice to have a long term plan. 😉
Better bring snacks.
so much for the prime directive of most successful companies of “under promise and over deliver”…
i grow weary of his constant hype, just get back to the main focus of making high quality hardware (which they still do) and software that “just works” (which they need to do better at, of late) and things will take care of themselves w/o any unnecessary grandstanding.
Does Apple actually sell refurbished iPhones anywhere?
I’ve never seen refurb iPhones available in the UK for sale. The only refurb iPhones we seem to be offered are when we exchange a faulty iPhone for another. They’re not offered for sale to new customers in the way that Tim Cook is talking about in India.
The UK Apple Store always lists refurb Macs, iPads, iPods and accessories, but whenever I’ve looked for iPhones I have never seen any. It would be good to be able to point to cheaper iPhones and tell people that there is a way to get an iPhone if they don’t have much money.
I don’t know about the UK, but practically every US mobile operator offers refurbished iPhones, and they come straight from Apple, with standard AppleCare coverage. I don’t remember seeing them on Apple.com, though.
Why the heck would someone one-star a question and a factual answer?
When you take in a bad iPhone for “repair” (where it is actually replaced), aren’t those refurbs that they give you?
Yes, you do get given a refurb if your existing iPhone is ‘repaired’, which is what I mentioned in my original query. Your faulty iPhone will be repaired if possible and end up as somebody else’s repaired iPhone.
A thousand years. That’s what I call long-term thinking. This is not Tim Cook effusing with eye-rolling superlatives; this is a direct signal of intent to embrace Indian culture and embed Apple in the fabric of the world’s largest democracy, seeking out its brilliant peoples in rebirthing its design and research groups, laying the foundation for local production, marketing, and distribution throughout Asia, even eventually saying buh-bye to the petulant EU and knuckleheaded US.
I look forward to the Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva phone series.
I agree, what a lovely interview balancing global and local concerns.
Plus your commentary, well I think you know how that makes me feel.
And Chip Kelly said Nick Foles was his quarterback for the next 1,000 years. Meaningless.
Fire Tim Cook! He’s doing a terrible job and ruining AAPL!!!! *rolls eyes*
“next 1000 years”?!? WTF… Heil Cook?
Cook’s lowballing. He doesn’t want to exaggerate.
Tim Cook, always exaggerating, over promising, feeding the myth.
It remains to be seen if Cook will be able to keep the Mac viable for the next 25 years. Cheerleader CEOs spewing superlatives doesn’t inspire user confidence when the products in the Apple stores are all stale.
“The trouble is, you think you have time.” – Buddha
Cook needs to focus on the next 12 months. Apple’s longest-standing, most loyal, and most evangelising users are about to start jumping ship.
I am talking about Mac users – who have no reason to go to an Apple Store today.
Cook doesn’t seem to care and often says that iPad will replace PCs – and, presumably, Macs.
Let’s face it, no-one buys a Mac for Apple’s awful apps, and the Windows version of Office is much more functional.
The deal-breaker for me is a trading app, which requires Windows.
So I run parallels on a Mac Pro (with cables and crap all over my desk).
Parallels works ok, but I found myself wondering why I need Mac OS at all. And if I don’t have a Mac I don’t need an iPhone. Or an iPad. And I never needed a watch.
Cook has 6 months I would say, before the general exodus is on in earnest.
Successful people and companies set goals.
If it isn’t already obvious, Cook doesn’t have a plan for >5 years, and no one on this planet has a plan for more than a century at most. The results speak for themselves.
Lol, the Cook haters must be having some kind of communal bash day. I wonder if they orgasm when they click that submit button? Lol. I’m not surprised that Apple is seeking out India. I just hope that India knows that Apple is about quality, not just more small game apps. If so, then fine. Let the great minds shine and show us new ways.