As Tim Cook steps down, India stands at the heart of Apple’s next chapter

The night before Tim Cook arrived in Hyderabad in May 2016, I was told to get there and try to get him on camera. While most TV news crews waited at Apple’s office, my cameraman and I took a chance on the VIP exit at Hyderabad airport. Cook emerged with his entourage, and I managed to ask him two questions as we walked towards his car. The exchange lasted barely 30 seconds, but it made our business news channel the first to get a sound bite from Cook that morning.

The visit itself had greater significance. Apple opened its maps development centre in Hyderabad and announced an iOS app design and development accelerator in Bengaluru, giving its long-standing India ambitions a more tangible shape. A decade later, as Cook steps down as Apple CEO on August 31 after 15 years at the helm, India occupies a very different place in the company’s plans.

Apple’s annual sales in India crossed $10 billion for the first time in the year ended March 2026, according to Bloomberg. Its physical retail network has expanded beyond the first stores it opened in Mumbai and Delhi in 2023. India also assembled about 55 million iPhones in 2025, or roughly a quarter of Apple’s global production. The numbers capture the evolution of Cook’s India bet.

He came to see the country as two opportunities at once: a growing market for Apple products and an alternative production base as the company sought to reduce its dependence on China. The two bets did not mature at the same pace, and neither is complete. Apple remains a premium player in a price-sensitive smartphone market. India, meanwhile, is still some distance from matching the depth and efficiency of China’s electronics supply chain. But Cook leaves behind a company for which India is no longer a market that is always about to arrive. It is now central to how Apple sells and where it makes its most important product.

The long wait for Indian consumers

Cook’s optimism about India long preceded Apple’s commercial breakthrough in the country. The opportunity appeared obvious. India had a large, young population, rising incomes, and hundreds of millions of smartphone users. Yet converting those advantages into iPhone sales proved difficult.

Import duties made Apple’s products more expensive. Rules governing foreign-owned retail complicated its plans to open stores. The company was also competing in a market where the largest volumes came from devices priced far below the iPhone.

Apple did not chase India’s mass market. It waited for more Indian consumers to move up to the iPhone. The company began assembling iPhones locally in 2017, initially using Wistron to produce older models in Bengaluru. Local assembly helped reduce some of the disadvantages associated with importing finished devices.

Apple opened its online store in India in 2020, giving it a direct relationship with customers. In April 2023, Cook returned to India to open the company’s first physical stores in Mumbai and Delhi. The retail network has since expanded to other cities. The stores were about more than adding sales points. They gave Apple greater control over how its products were presented and allowed it to offer financing, trade-ins, technical support and the wider Apple experience directly to customers.

At the same time, India’s smartphone market was changing. More consumers were willing to pay for premium devices. No-cost instalments, exchange programmes and lower-priced older-generation iPhones made the brand accessible to a wider group without requiring Apple to abandon its premium positioning. Apple’s India revenue was close to $6 billion in the year ended March 2023, up from $4.1 billion a year earlier. Three years later, annual sales reportedly crossed $10 billion.

In one of his last earnings calls as CEO, Tim Cook was ‘over the moon’ on India growth, counting the country among Apple’s strongest-performing markets. That growth matters because Apple has achieved it without competing seriously in the segments that generate most of India’s smartphone volumes. The company has instead benefited from the expansion of the premium category, a segment it has helped shape. But the most consequential part of Cook’s legacy may lie on the production side.

From selling iPhones to making them

Long before he succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO, Cook was the operator who made Apple’s ‘trains run on time’. He streamlined inventory, suppliers and manufacturing, building a supply chain capable of producing complex devices at enormous scale and healthy margins. That machine also left Apple heavily dependent on China. The pandemic, disruptions at major factories, rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, and the threat of tariffs exposed the risks of that concentration. Apple needed additional production centres, even if replacing China entirely was neither practical nor desirable.

India emerged as Apple’s most important alternative base for iPhone production. What began in 2017 with the assembly of older devices expanded to include Apple’s latest and premium models. Foxconn increased its manufacturing footprint, while Tata Electronics emerged as a major Indian partner after taking over Wistron’s local operations and acquiring a controlling stake in Pegatron’s India business.

Apple assembled about 55 million iPhones in India in 2025, a 53% increase from the previous year, according to Bloomberg. That represented roughly 25% of its estimated global iPhone output. India now supplies a growing share of the iPhones sold in Apple’s largest consumer market, the US. In 2025, Cook said a majority of the iPhones sold in the US during the June quarter would have India as their country of origin. Vietnam, meanwhile, would supply most of the iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and AirPods sold in the US. This is the real significance of the India manufacturing story. India is not merely producing iPhones for Indian consumers. It is becoming an export base for Apple’s global operations.

iPhone exports from India crossed an estimated Rs 2 lakh crore in FY26, according to reports based on vendor submissions and government trade data. Apple’s vendors now account for a substantial share of the country’s smartphone exports, making the company one of the most visible beneficiaries of India’s production-linked incentive programme for electronics manufacturing.

For the Indian government, Apple has become evidence that global electronics supply chains can be persuaded to move to the country. For Apple, India offers scale, policy support and an alternative to concentrating so much production in China. It has also given the company greater flexibility at a time when tariffs and geopolitics increasingly influence where products are manufactured.

Assembly is only the first step

The rapid growth in iPhone production can, however, make Apple’s India presence appear deeper than it is. India assembles a growing number of iPhones, but many of the high-value components inside them continue to come from overseas. China retains a network of suppliers, engineers, tooling companies, logistics providers and skilled workers built over several decades.

That ecosystem allows Apple to move from product design to mass production with a speed and flexibility that India cannot yet match. The distinction matters. Producing a larger number of finished iPhones does not automatically mean India is capturing a proportionate share of their value. The next stage will depend on whether Apple and its partners can localise more components, improve manufacturing yields, develop specialised skills and bring a wider group of suppliers into the country. India must also provide stable policies, efficient ports, reliable infrastructure and the large pools of trained workers needed to support factories operating at Apple’s scale. The consumer opportunity has similar limits.

India may have crossed $10 billion in annual sales for Apple, but the iPhone remains unaffordable for most smartphone buyers. Apple must find ways to reach more consumers without weakening the premium positioning that supports its margins and brand. That is the unfinished part of Cook’s India bet. It is also the job Ternus inherits.

What John Ternus must do next

Cook is giving up the CEO role, but not leaving Apple. From September 1, he will become executive chairman and continue to assist the company, including in its engagement with policymakers. John Ternus, Apple’s longtime hardware engineering chief, takes over as CEO at a time when the company faces questions about artificial intelligence, its next major product category and the resilience of its supply chain. India will be central to how Ternus tackles at least one of them: Apple’s dependence on China.

Ternus must build on the consumer momentum by expanding retail, strengthening the developer ecosystem and selling more services alongside devices. On the manufacturing side, the task is to move India beyond final assembly and make it a larger source of components, engineering expertise and supplier capacity. More Indian customers give Apple a reason to invest here. A deeper local supply chain, in turn, makes India more important to Apple globally. When I caught Cook outside Hyderabad airport in 2016, Apple’s India ambitions still rested largely on what it planned to do next. A decade later, the factories, stores and sales numbers have made that bet far more concrete.

Cook established Apple’s two-sided India bet. Ternus must now take it deeper.