Apple’s brand new App Accelerator in Bengaluru, India, is officially open for business!
Plans for the 40,000-square-foot office space were first announced by Tim Cook during his visit to India last year. The App Accelerator’s purpose is to offer guidance, inspiration, tutorials, and feedback to local developers building iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and Mac OS apps.
“We are impressed by the great entrepreneurial spirit in India, and are excited to provide a platform for these developers to share their innovations with customers around the world,” Phil Schiller said in a statement. “In just the first few weeks, we’ve already seen some incredible developers here at the App Accelerator Bengaluru, including Practo and Reliance Games, create innovative apps that can meet the needs of customers in India and around the world.”
Developers wanting to be a part of the new App Accelerator have to sign-up, after which Apple selects various developers each week to receive instruction and resources to help them bring their apps to life.
“India is home to one of the most vibrant and entrepreneurial iOS development communities in the world,” said Tim Cook. “With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, we’re giving developers access to tools which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world.”
A growing market
Bangalore is quickly becoming an Indian hotbed for Apple. From next month, Apple manufacturer Wistron will start building iPhones in the region, which Apple hopes will expand it presence in India.
Investing in India comes with several advantages for Apple. Firstly, it helps Apple get around local sourcing demands which otherwise bar it, as an international company, from opening retail stores in the country, or receiving the full support of the government.
Having a local way to tap into Indian developer talent is also incredibly useful. Despite India being such a populous country, right now only a tiny fraction of Indians own iPhones. Just yesterday we reported on how the total revenue brought in by Android apps is set to overtake iOS apps in 2017.
One big reason for this is the explosion of new low-end Android devices in emerging markets including India, Indonesia, Brazil, and others. Making popular localized iOS apps for Indian customers by Indian developers isn’t going to change those stats overnight, but it certainly can’t hurt!
