​Apple bets on local apps to sell iPhones

Bengaluru: Indian app developers are excited about working with senior Apple executives at the proposed design and development accelerator in Bengaluru. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker is looking to build a long-term relationship with Indian developers to build more locally relevant apps on the iOS platform, which Apple hopes will increase the iPhone sales in India.

With the design and development accelerator in Bengaluru, which is set to open early next year, Apple is also expecting to interact more with India’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem on a continuous basis. Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom Product Council, said Apple’s accelerator will engage with second line of developers in the country, who will now have direct access to Apple’s expertise in top-notch design and user friendly interface. “It augurs well for Apple. India has a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem and they need to catch the developers early on,” he said.

India is expected to surpass the US with 5.2 million developers in 2018 compared to 4.5 million developers there, according to a report from Evan’s Data Corp. Even though India has a sizeable base of Android developers, Apple is only now making the right noises to connect with Indian developers to built locally relevant apps. India being a largely Android market has just 1% developers working on Apple’s iOS platform, Apple's software platform for its mobile devices. Also, most developers on the iOS platforms are cross-platform developers.

Rohith Bhat, MD and CEO of Robosoft Technologies, said, “It’s a big validation that India is a very important market. Tim Cook referred to India as the next China — that shows India’s place under the sun.” Robosoft Technologies has developed over 1,400 apps across enterprise mobility, games and entertainment.

Apple said that once the accelerator is fully-functional next year, experts from the company’s headquarters will lead briefings and provide one-on-one app reviews for developers every week. It added the facility will also support developers on its on latest programming language Swift that was created to build apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. Swift enables developers to write code, save time and create richer app experiences. Apple has four software platforms — iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS — which provide seamless experiences across all devices and empower people with services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud.

“… My clients ask me for 8,000-10,000 Android app downloads every day compared to 100-200 iOS downloads. That’s a long catch-up,” said Rohan Patil, MD of app marketing firm Applift India Technologies. Apple’s iOS has an overall installed base of less than 2% market share in India where Google's cheap Android phones dominate the 100 million smartphones sold in the country every year. The trick for Apple is to increase the sales of iPhones in India, say experts. Apple had requested government to allow the import of refurbished iPhones in the country, which was denied by the government. "... It (selling refurbished devices) makes a business case in a price-sensitive market inundated with Android devices," said Shobhit Bhatnagar, AVP-HR, Sourcebits, a mobile app development and design company.

“Apple is looking to build long-term relationship with the developers with the accelerator programme and these are people without whom you can’t grow the platform,” said Zainab Bawa, CEO of HasGeek, a developer community, which runs several developer events. Bawa said that the drop in Macbook prices helped create a developer community and democratise the developer community in India. She said that similarly, as iPhones become more common, the country will see more developers on the platform.

Santosh Rajan, founder of GeekSkool, a coding training programme, said the problem for Apple runs deeper with most Indians still coding using Windows machines apart from the schools and colleges in the country mostly using Microsoft powered-PCs, “You need Mac devices to develop iOS apps and the Mac penetration in India is still low. Unless they open the application development on Linux, you won’t see a large iOS developer community.”