Apple has appointed Ashish Chowdhary, Chief Customer Operations Officer at Nokia Networks, as its India operations head, reliable industry sources told IANS on Tuesday 13 November.
Chowdhary will join as Apple India head from January 2019, the sources confirmed.
The decision to hire Chowdhary is a testament to the fact that Apple is aiming for a really long-term growth in a price-sensitive market where Apple is an aspirational brand and usually bought by those who have high spending power or can go for older generation phones for affordability.
In line with the development, Nokia also announced on Tuesday changes in the composition of its group leadership team, declaring that Chowdhary will "leave Nokia at the end of 2018 after 15 successful years."
"Chowdhary will continue to lead Customer Operations and remain a member of the Nokia Group Leadership Team until the end of 2018. He will then leave Nokia to take a leadership position in another company," said Nokia.
According to industry sources, Apple has roped in Chowdhary – who has a sound global as well as local knowledge of the industry – to get a bigger slice of a market that has nearly 450 million users and is one of the fastest growing, after China and the US.
Apple India is currently overseen by Michel Coulomb who took over from Sanjay Kaul in December last year.
Chowdhary has 25 years of international experience in the enterprise and telecom sectors. As Chief Business Officer, he was responsible for Nokia Networks' sales and operations globally.
He has held various leadership positions, including Head of Asia Middle East and Africa and prior to that, Head of Global Services Business Unit.
Both these units contributed nearly half of the company's revenues and were key to the successful transformation of Nokia.
The appointment comes at a time when the iPhone maker is seeking tax relief and other incentives from the government to begin assembling more handsets in the country and its proposal to set up a manufacturing unit is also being evaluated.
Apple is only assembling the iPhone 6S in India with its partner Wistron right now. Because of this, the company is finding it tough to reduce the prices of other iPhone models. With pricing of the new iPhones; XS and XS Max reaching aspirational levels, it’ll take more than just hiring a local experienced hand to change the company’s fortunes in the Indian market.
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