Apple deciding to move support out of India is a top news in the blogosphere as well as the regular reporting world. Though I have not seen any official release from Apple on this. Specualtion is rife that rising costs and difficulties in hiring and retaining talent forced Apple to move out of India.
While, I can't say with certainity what forced Apple to move support out of India, I have reasons to think that the real causative factors behind the decision is not yet out. Look at Dell - all indications are that their india support operations are going from strength to stregngth. IBM's recent announcement to invest 6 billion USD in india in the next three years made some to comment that I stands for India in IBM. The Indian resource edge is not fading or going away - atleast not that fast. In any case no other english speaking country can be more economical than India as things stand today. So what could be the reason. I suspect that Apple's india support operations may not have had the scale to run it optimally - both in terms of fixed cost and variable costs - when operational size is small, it is likely that the best minds may get disillussioned dure to limited opportunities - leading to staff turnover, add switiching costs, retraining costs - the overall cost equation may have lost its attractiveness and it is likely that the situation worsened over a period of time forcing Apple to decide in terms of a pull out - mind you - all am writing is pure speculation. If speculation is right - what's the solution - more outsourcing !! There is no merit in keeping support as captive unit where scale is not there - whichever part of the world it might be - outsourcing support may be the long term option for Apple. Lets us see as the future unfolds for Apple.
Category :Apple, Outsourcing, India
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