Samsung and Apple are locked in an epic clash inside one of the world’s largest emerging markets for mobile devices.
On Tuesday, a new report from India’s Economic Times indicated that Apple is about to take this war to a whole new level.
By the close of 2015, Apple’s retail presence inside of India will triple.
Within 36 months, Apple’s reseller presence will expand to more than 200 locations across the nation.
India had for a long time been a low-priority market for the company founded by Steve Jobs. But surging sales of iPhones and iPads here, combined with the growing inroads of Samsung in its traditional US market and elsewhere, have prompted Apple to take a serious look at India as it searches for new growth markets.
In recent months, Apple has pulled out all the stops to bolster its iDevice user base in India. In late 2012, for example, Apple began authorizing the use of payment plans to help prospective iPhone buyers more easily secure the popular smartphone inside of India.
“In Q4, Apple has turned out to be the number two player in India. And this means that they have done a significant shift in their positioning,” Venu Reddy, research director at IDC, stated earlier this year.
For now, Samsung remains the top smartphone vendor in India. But Apple, it appears, is breathing down Samsung’s neck at a rate that’s too close for comfort for Android fans.
