New Delhi, Sept. 7 -- I remember a late-night news broadcast in the late 2000s showing a massive queue outside a storefront emblazoned with Apple's logo. The report was about the launch of a new kind of smartphone-an unknown concept in the glory days of Nokia and BlackBerry-that had sparked such frenzy in New York City that lines outside Apple's store stretched for kilometres.

Back then, this experience was unique.

Now, until 2023, Apple didn't have a single physical store in India. It first opened an outlet in Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla Complex, followed by another in Delhi. On 2 September, the iPhone maker opened its third 'own' store in the country in Bengaluru-after a gap of more than two years.

I imagined that the craze would have fade...