Apple Inc will launch its first online store in India on Sept. 23, the iPhone maker said on Friday, coinciding with the country’s festive season that rakes in some of the biggest sales for retailers every year.

The company currently sells its products in India through third-party vendors and e-commerce firms such as Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc-owned Flipkart.

India, with more than 1 billion wireless subscribers of which about a third rely on basic handsets, provides huge growth prospects for smartphone makers, as well as cheap labor to manufacture the devices.

Apple assembles some smartphones, including the iPhone 11, at Foxconn and Wistron’s plants in two southern Indian states.

Through its online retail platform, Apple plans to offer assistance to customers in English and Hindi, while allowing users to engrave their iPads, Apple Pencil and Airpods in English and also in a handful of Indian languages, including Bengali and Gujarati.

Earlier this week, Apple rolled out a virtual fitness service and a bundle of all its subscriptions, Apple One, focusing on services that are the backbone of Apple’s growth strategy and that cater to customers working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Reuters

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Apple Inc. added two new online radio channels to its streaming music service and renamed the flagship station Apple Music 1, shedding the Beats brand that had been in place since the debut in 2015.

One of the new stations features hits from the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, and the other plays popular country music. Apple Music 1 will continue to feature modern pop, Latin music and DJ hosts.

Apple Music competes with Spotify Technology SA in music streaming. Spotify has sought to add subscribers by amping up its podcast offerings, with exclusives from Michelle Obama and Joe Rogan. For Apple, subscriptions are a key part of its strategy to add new sources of revenue. The technology giant is expected to release a series of bundles, currently known internally as Apple One, as early as October to spur more interest.
 

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“Fortnite” users will no longer be able to use Apple Inc’s sign-in system to log in to the game as early as Friday, the video game maker said.

Apple and Epic Games have been in a legal battle since August when the maker of the popular video game launched its own in-app payment system.

Apple’s App Store requires developers to use Apple’s payment system and pay a 30% commission.

The iPhone maker on Thursday filed counterclaims against Epic, asking for lost App Store fees and other damages, and seeking an order to stop the game maker from operating its own in-app payment system.

Source: Reuters

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Apple Inc’s new paid online fitness class service, designed to work with its Apple Watch, was a long-planned extension of the watch’s fitness features rather than a quick reaction to a pandemic that has closed many gyms, executives said in an interview.

The Fitness+ service is Apple’s first subscription geared to make money directly from the sensor-packed device it has been selling since 2014.

The service, which Apple said will be available by the end of the year, has new workouts each week filmed by a team of trainers in a purpose-built studio in Los Angles and focuses on exercises that require little or no gym equipment, using Apple Watch sensors to track progress.

Many analysts viewed the service, which was announced on Tuesday, as well timed for a work-from-home world. But Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said in an interview on Wednesday that work on the service started “quite a while ago.” He described it as “a natural extension of the goal of Apple Watch, which is to help people live a better day.”

“At least pre-Covid, if you could write one prescription for the world from physicians, it would have been to be more active. It’s so powerful,” Williams said in a press briefing. “So anything we do in that realm that helps people be more active is something we’re excited about.”

Once gyms do reopen, the Fitness+ service will also work with compatible gym equipment such as smart treadmills. The service will cost $10 per month or $80 per year.

Jay Blahnik, senior director of fitness technologies at Apple, said the service’s goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible and that Apple aimed to assemble a diverse lineup of instructors.

“We have trainers in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even their 60s. Showcasing that kind of diversity was really important to us because how we move and how we train is different as we age,” Blahnik said.

Source: Reuters

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