Apple is making a strategic push to expand its footprint in India's competitive streaming market through a new partnership with Bharti Airtel, the country’s second-largest telecom operator. This deal is poised to significantly broaden the user base for Apple TV+ and Apple Music, two services that have struggled to gain a strong foothold in a market dominated by giants like Spotify and Disney+ Hotstar.

Under the agreement, Apple will offer free access to its music and video streaming services to a significant portion of Airtel’s 281 million customers. This move is part of Apple's broader strategy to grow its global services revenue, which includes apps, payments, and media content. In India, where Apple has traditionally focused more on manufacturing and supply chain diversification, this partnership signals a shift towards aggressively pursuing the consumer market.

India has become an increasingly important market for Apple, particularly as the company seeks to reduce its reliance on China for manufacturing. Apple has been producing many of its iPhones in India, and its market share in the country has seen some growth, rising to 6% of the 690 million smartphones in use, up from around 2% in 2019, according to data from Counterpoint Research. However, Apple’s content services have lagged, partly due to limited localized content and high competition.

Nitesh Kripalani, a former head of Amazon Prime Video in India, noted that Apple’s latest move demonstrates its long-term ambitions for India. "The strategy is a time-tested method to catapult presence in markets it considers important", Kripalani said, pointing to Apple’s past successes in bundling its services with telecom operators in other regions.

In the U.S., Apple Music has been offered for free to some Verizon customers since 2019, and Apple TV+ was recently included in a Comcast streaming bundle. This approach has helped Apple to rapidly increase its user base in those markets. In India, Apple Music will soon be available to premium users of Airtel's Wynk music app, which is set to be phased out. Currently, about 7 million Airtel postpaid subscribers have access to the ad-free version of Wynk, though only a small fraction are active users.

Neither Apple nor Airtel has officially commented on the partnership, but industry sources suggest that Airtel will pay Apple a per-user fee that is "significantly" lower than the $1.20 monthly charge for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in India. In return, Airtel aims to save millions of rupees in licensing fees by shutting down Wynk and relying on Apple Music to enhance customer loyalty and boost revenue.

The music streaming market in India is fiercely competitive, with Spotify leading the pack with approximately 3 million paid users, followed by Gaana with 1.4 million, Wynk with 500,000, and Apple Music with just 200,000, according to an Indian music industry source. These figures highlight the challenge Apple faces in trying to catch up to its rivals. Overall, only about 7.5 million people in India paid for audio streaming services last year, out of approximately 185 million users of both ad-supported and ad-free apps, according to data from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and consultants EY.

In the video streaming space, Apple TV+ has an even smaller presence, with fewer than 1 million users, according to Counterpoint Research. Disney+ Hotstar dominates the market with 38 million users, while Netflix has around 10 million. Apple TV+ is known for its high-quality original series like 'The Morning Show' and 'Slow Horses', but it lacks the extensive library of Hindi content that has made rivals like Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar so popular in India. Moreover, Apple’s content offerings are primarily in English, which limits their appeal in a country where regional languages dominate the entertainment landscape.

According to industry sources, the partnership with Airtel will involve offering several months of free access to Apple TV+ as part of certain packages. While this will likely increase the service’s reach, experts caution that growth may be slow unless Apple can localize its content offerings to better cater to Indian audiences. "The offering is still not optimised locally that much", said Counterpoint’s Neil Shah, pointing to Apple TV+'s lack of regional-language films and Bollywood content, which are crucial for capturing the Indian market.