In what is seen as a big step for Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO in India, the company has received approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board to setup its single-brand retail stores in the country. The information was published on the department's official website on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The go-ahead to open its own retail stores allows OPPO to sell its products directly to consumers without third-party involvement. Initially, it was required for foreign brands to source 30 percent of the products locally in order to setup a single-brand retail store, but the government relaxed those conditions in 2016 for three years.
In a statement released by OPPO India on Wednesday, the company said it is aiming at building 550 service centers in the country by the end of 2017, without disclosing the investment and number of OPPO showrooms it plans to open under SBRT (single brand retail trading).
"We welcome the government's decision, which is in line with our commitment to providing good quality camera phones to the young Indian users and we strongly aim to bring the best of camera, especially selfie experience to the Indian users.
We have offline stores across the country to provide our consumers better services in the process of purchase and with this development, we will continue to enhance the offline presence to connect with more and more consumers.
Now we have opened more than 200 OPPO Showrooms. In the future we are going to expand more OPPO Showrooms to let consumers get a closer experience on and purchase our products."
Besides OPPO, Xiaomi has a decent offline presence with Mi Home stores in select cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Noida, Chennai and Haryana. OnePlus, another key smartphone player from China, has an offline store in Bengaluru, which is merely an Experience Store without entertaining any sales.
Who's next?
While these Chinese brands get a green signal from the Indian government on setting up offline stores in the country, one of the largest smartphone makers – Apple – has been vying to open its official Apple Stores in the third largest smartphone market in the world.
Apple's negotiations with the Indian government on opening its offline stores have been ongoing since 2014. With the latest approval granted to OPPO, the path to Apple Stores in India seems to have cleared.
"Opening a retail store will boost Apple's newer generation sales...it's also the experience that having a store allows you to offer to consumers," Tarun Pathak, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in a statement.
Apple has already applied for store licenses with the government of India, pending approval. An earlier report had suggested that Apple intends on opening stores in key cities, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and the National Capital Region (NCR), and the stores would resemble the landmark Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York.
Apple, which has a market share of less than three percent in the country of over 1.3 billion population, currently relies on Redington India to sell iPhones. The Cupertino-based tech titan is already assembling its iPhone SE models in India in partnership with supplier Wistron.
Even with a possible solution in sight, it remains unclear how long it is going to be before Apple Stores officially become the new landmarks in India. Consumers, for one, will certainly be happy with such a move.
