It is a good news for Apple fans in India as Tim cook announced that they will open its first physical store in India in 2021. An online outlet will be available later this this year for Indians. Tim announced this at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting.

Apple's move into India, the second largest smartphone market in the world, has been expected for some time, but the announcement of a date was new.

India is the second largest smartphone market in the world. It was speculated that Apple would eventually make this move sooner or later. So here comes the confirmation with a date.

In 2018 India opened its market to the foreign brands allowing them to open single-brand stores in the country. Cook added that India wanted Apple to open a store in the country joining with a local partner. But he was quick to add that “Apple won’t be a good partner as they prefer doing things their way.”

For now, Apple has third party stores in India. But the biggest smartphone markets in India are owned by Samsung and Huawei. Gradually the market for Apple has been decreasing in China irrespective of the Corona virus. So this move seems like a sensible one to capture the developing markets.

Human rights vote

The proposal would have forced Apple to publicly commit to respecting "freedom of expression as a human right."

A special vote was conducted at the meeting which allowed the investors give their opinion on Apples way of handling the requests by various governments to remove apps from the App store.

This issue was raised mainly because of what happened in China not too late. Apple removed some apps by the government of China including an app that allowed protesters in Hong Kong get around China's internet restrictions.

The shareholders advisory groups Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services were keen to apply the measure. However it got on 40% in its favor. And was voted down.

Corona Virus Impact.

The impact of Corona Virus for Apples operations were discussed in the meeting. Earlier Apple announced that that they will lose not be able to meet its quarterly earnings estimate because of the virus. A main reason behind is, many of the Chinese plants that that make parts of Apple products are either closed or active at a limited capacity to prevent the outbreak of the virus.

At the opportunity given to the shareholders to question, 1 person asked “Why Apple didn’t buy the rights to upcoming reunion of the TV show Friends - which is slated for HBO Max.

Tim Cook replied saying “”a spin off would not be keeping with the brand of Apple TV Plus - which is focused on original content.”.