Apple is slowly but surely developing a strategy for selling phones in India.

The Economic Times reports:

Apple plans to go local with a vengeance, setting up small, neighbourhood shops in big cities and tier II markets, in a bid to get closer to potential buyers as it pushes ahead with an India-specific strategy aimed at trying to grab market share from dominant rival Samsung.

Apple largely ignored India until 2012. Since then, it's been experimenting, trying to figure out what works.

The problem for Apple in India is that it's phones are expensive. The price of an iPhone as a percentage of per capita GDP is higher in India than anywhere else. An iPhone 5S goes for $1,180 in India.

India is the second biggest mobile market in the world with 800 million users.

Last year, Apple only sold 1 million phones in India. But that was a big improvement. The year prior, Apple sold 500,000 phones, according to Gartner, via the New York Times.

One thing that is boosting sales is that Apple began manufacturing the iPhone 4 to sell at a lower price in India. It doesn't sell the iPhone 4 anywhere else.

Now, it's solidifying a retail strategy.

We're not expecting massive sales, but this is a solid foundation for Apple which is looking for growth anywhere it can get it nowadays.