Apple Inc is aiming building out a services business portfolio in Chinese market which is one of the most critical overseas markets for it and to achieve that goal, iPhone maker has initiated an apps development program in Shanghai to help Chinese developers creating apps.
Workshops, networking sessions and lectures will be held as part of the program or accelerator on regular basis, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. There are more than 2.5 million developers attached with Apple’s platforms are from Greater China which comprise of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China.
Apple is starting the program at a time when it has been facing lowering iPhone sales in China as well as in the world and CEO Tim Cook has highlighted the company’s services business in the country as an opportunity worth availing, as the services business generates revenue from media, apps and other software.
A report from research firm Evercore ISI, on Tuesday, unveiled that over the quarter ended June, Apple’s revenue from services had likely be raised partly because of its growth in China.
Apple has a similar accelerator in Indian city of Begaluru, opened in 2017. Markets in both India and China are dominated by players like Xiaomi and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd with use of Android as an operating system in their devices.
In order to better compete with rivals in China, Apple, earlier this year, came up launching several financing scheme to lure Chinese consumers, making iPhones more affordable to them while prices of some iPhone models were also reduced by the Chinese electronics retailers.
A trade war between the United States and China also added to Apple’s slowing sales for which the iPhone maker is considering shifting some of its production capacities out of China as it asked suppliers to access the cost implications of the same.
