Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, will meet with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi later this week to discuss the company’s expansion plans in the country.

The meeting, which will also reportedly involve India’s deputy IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, will take place in New Delhi on Wednesday when Apple opens its second official retail store in the country. The company opened its first Indian location in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Apple to date has struggled to grow a significant presence in India due to high pricing and the ubiquity of cheaply produced smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. It currently only has a three per cent share of the smartphone market in the country.

In spite of its slim market share in the world’s second-largest smartphone market, India is becoming increasingly central to Apple’s supply chain operations. The company currently contracts Wistron Corp and Foxconn to assemble iPhones in India, and has plans to add iPads and AirPods to that list. Apple smartphones accounted for more than 50 per cent of the $9 billion worth of smartphones that were exported from India between April 2022 and February 2023.

While the sources cited by Reuters did not elaborate, it is believed that Cook and Modi will discuss Apple’s growing focus on India – though it is unclear whether this discussion will be around growing the company’s retail footprint, its supply chain operations or its install base.

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