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Comment by tonyedgecombe | Hacker News Reader

India wants more Apple manufacturing and Apple wants to sell India more phones. My guess is this won't happen.

Right. India is the obvious destination for Apple if/when they decide to get out of their reliance on China.

Is it? Indian and Chinese culture is very different. Apple benefits greatly from China's unquenchable thirst for luxury goods in general, not just phones but clothing, cars, etc. Signalling wealth through conspicuous consumption is important in China. I don't see that same characteristic in Indian culture; of course there is a market for luxury goods but it's not the same.

> I don't see that same characteristic in Indian culture; of course there is a market for luxury goods but it's not the same.

Can it be just because of the difference in disposable income in the countries? I don't know any reliable metric for income but the GDP per capita of PRC is five times that of India. The quench for luxurious goods comes with rising income.

True but apple sells luxury , or premium products. They don’t seem to care for poorer countries

Yes, but China only became rich enough that lots of wealthy young Chinese could be buying iPhones recently. I do not think it would be unreasonable to make the same bet on India being a decade or two behind.

Its not automatic. China took decades of policy and benefited from periods of global growth. India has different politics

" benefited from periods of global growth" -> China had incredible post-2008 growth, that is a large part of why there are so many people buying iPhones.

> India has different politics

What do you mean? It's more inequitable than China and has more political capture by private actors, but I don't see why the same couldn't occur in India.

While it might have been true at one time, this is not true anymore. A lot of their products are at price points that are not luxury.

I think their point was about manufacturing, not consumption.

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