Apple will open its first Pune store, Apple Koregaon Park, at 1 p.m. IST on Thursday, 4 September, two days after its Bengaluru debut in Apple Hebbal. The twin launches take Apple’s India retail network from two to four in under a week, a decisive push ahead of the iPhone 17 cycle. Apple confirmed the Pune date and address on its official store page.
Apple says the barricade art for both stores uses “rich, vibrant feathers inspired by the Peacock, India’s national bird and a symbol of pride,” language that mirrors the company’s communication for the Bengaluru reveal last week and Pune today. Bengaluru’s Apple Hebbal opens on 2 September at 1 p.m. IST inside Phoenix Mall of Asia; Pune’s Apple Koregaon Park follows at The KOPA, Koregaon Park. Multiple outlets carried the dates, locations and Apple’s peacock-feather motif.
What The Visuals Say (And What They Don’t)
There is no official launch video for the Pune store at the time of writing. Apple’s most visible assets are the peacock-feather wallpapers and a curated Apple Music playlist linked from the store page, the former riffing on jewel tones and feather striations that dissolve into the Apple glyph. It is tasteful. It is recognisably Indian without being kitsch. It positions Pune as a creative, cosmopolitan node in Apple’s map.
Retail, Now A System, Not Just A Storefront
As the doors open, Apple will lean on a retail system it has been stitching together all year. “Shop with a Specialist over Video” — Apple’s guided, one-way video consult — launched in India in July 2025, joining the Apple Store app, which arrived here in January 2025. The video sessions run on the India online store and are designed to demystify models, financing and trade-ins before a customer ever touches a display unit. Pune and Bengaluru will also run Today at Apple sessions, including classes that now explicitly promise to help people “Explore Apple Intelligence.”
Accessibility Is Not A Footnote, It is The Pitch
Apple’s recent accessibility cadence underpins this retail framing. Over the last two cycles, Apple previewed and shipped features such as Eye Tracking, Vocal Shortcuts, Music Haptics, and Vehicle Motion Cues — tools that make devices easier to use in real life, not just demo theatres. Its award-winning short film “The Greatest” set the tone by placing disabled talent at the centre of the story rather than at the margins. In a market as broad as India’s, that is savvy brand architecture — and good policy.
Why Pune Matters Now
This is not a ceremonial ribbon-cut. India has shifted from “interesting market” to supply-and-demand flywheel for Apple. Consider the supply side first. Between March and May 2025, Foxconn exported iPhones worth USD 3.2 billion (about Rs 26,900 crore) from India, 97 per cent to the United States, as Apple worked around higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. Meanwhile, Tata Electronics has taken a 60 per cent stake in Pegatron’s India unit, after earlier acquiring Wistron’s iPhone plant, cementing a diversified local bench.
On the demand side, India’s premium market is finally behaving like, well, a premium market. In Q2 2025, iPhone 16 was the most-shipped device in India; wholesale market value jumped 18 per cent year on year, with Apple and Samsung sharing value leadership. In Apple’s own June-quarter results, the company flagged a record global June quarter, while local media noted India revenue records and more stores “lined up”. Retail capacity in Pune and Bengaluru doesn’t just sell phones; it oils that flywheel.
The iPhone 17 Cloud Hangs Over Everything
Apple has not officially announced the September keynote date but that should come sometime this week. But an avalanche of reporting points to an early-September reveal, with multiple outlets circling 9 September for the event and 19 September for first retail availability. Separately, Bloomberg and others report that U.S.-bound iPhone 17 units will ship from India at launch, a watershed if borne out. Treat the dates as informed expectations until Apple sends an invite.
Stores, Old And New
Apple BKC (Mumbai) and Apple Saket (Delhi) opened in April 2023, establishing Apple’s design playbook for India retail. Apple Hebbal adds South India, while Apple Koregaon Park adds a western India anchor. Apple is actually targeting six Indian stores by end-2025; Apple has not publicly confirmed the final roster but reports suggest additional stores in Delhi NCR and Mumbai regions.
The Real Signal
The peacock feathers are lovely. The real story is the supply chain sentence written behind them. India is now capable of building, exporting and retailing Apple hardware with real velocity. Foxconn’s Devanahalli plant near Bengaluru — described by state officials as a USD 2.8 billion (about Rs 25,000 crore) investment, is part of that momentum, alongside production in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. If you run retail on top of that, you stop being an outpost and become a base.
Apple’s Market Share Climbs; Profit Share Dominates India’s Premium Tier
Apple’s India story has shifted from niche to scale. IDC says Apple’s supplies rose 21.5 per cent year on year to 5.9 million units in the first half of 2025, with the iPhone 16 the most-shipped model in the country. Counterpoint reports the market rebounded in Q2 2025, up 8 per cent by volume and 18 per cent by wholesale value, with the ultra-premium tier growing 37 per cent on the back of Apple and Samsung. Crucially, Apple led India’s smartphone value share in 2024 at 23 per cent, underscoring its outsized grip on revenues despite a smaller unit share. India-only profit share isn’t routinely disclosed, but analysts estimate the industry’s highest average selling prices strongly indicate it captures the lion’s share of profits here, mirroring its global position, where it has taken around 85 per cent of operating profits in recent quarters.
Services And The Soft Power Of Stores
Apple’s store pages for Pune point you to Trade In, Education savings, free engraving in Indian languages, and Genius Bar appointments. All of that bumps lifetime value and locks in habit. In India, where EMI culture is strong and in-person trust still closes deals, physical stores plus video consults are a combination you’d draw up if you were designing for the market from scratch.
Accessibility And Marketing: More Than Slogans
It is not accidental that Today at Apple is foregrounding Apple Intelligence primers while the company expands its Accessibility playlist and documentation. The retail story syncs with the product story: make complex things easy, then put them in front of people. That is how ecosystems scale.
What It Means
Apple is not just opening two pretty stores. It is closing a loop: online consults for those who prefer screens, physical stores for those who prefer people, and local manufacturing that now feeds not just India but (reportedly) the U.S. during the iPhone 17 cycle. If the early-September dates land as tipped, Pune will barely have cut its ribbon when the first iPhone 17 queue forms. That is the point.
