Going forward, the Korean company's real competition could be nimble-footed Indian companies, more than the Nokia-Microsoft combine.
As of July 2011, Apple had 357 retail stores in 10 countries.
In order to determine whether this would be sound strategy for them, one needs to look at two issues: One, on the alliances being built globally between telcos, on one hand, and cloud service firms, on the other, especially with the advent of 5G; and two, how their business strategies in India will blend into with such a deal.
Bengaluru-based InMobi and Microsoft combine their powers to break the stranglehold of Google and Facebook in the digital advertising space.