Apple has formed a strategic partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom company. This collaboration aims to bolster Apple’s position in India’s competitive content market, where it currently trails rivals like Spotify and Walt Disney.
By offering free music and video streaming to a significant portion of Airtel’s 281 million customers, Apple is looking to expand its services revenue globally, particularly in areas like apps, payments, and media.
Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra for Reuters:
The deal is likely to greatly expand the user base for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in a country where Apple has long emphasised the manufacturing side of business to diversify its supply chain beyond China.
“The move speaks of Apple’s ambitions for India,” said Nitesh Kripalani, former head of Amazon Prime Video in India. “The strategy is a time-tested method to catapult presence in markets it considers important.”
Spotify has some 3 million paid users in India, Gaana has 1.4 million, Wynk 500,000 and Apple Music 200,000, said an Indian music industry source who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to share estimates publicly.
Airtel will pay Apple a per-user fee “significantly” lower than the monthly $1.20 charged each for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in India, said the telecom industry source.
In return, it will save millions of rupees in licensing as it looks to shut Wynk and use Apple Music to boost revenue and improve customer loyalty, said a second telecom source…
Apple is a small player in Indian video streaming, with Counterpoint estimating it has fewer than 1 million users. Disney+ Hotstar is the market leader with 38 million users, while estimates showed Netflix has around 10 million.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Music will quickly close the gap, challenging Spotify for dominance of the small, but growing, streaming music market in India. Apple TV+ will grow, too, but will need to provide some localized content to really catch on in the country.
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