Apple CEO plans meeting with Indian president: report

Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to meet with Indian President Narendra Modi this week, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The meeting had yet to be set for scheduling reasons, the report said. Cook will also reportedly announce that the company is opening an accelerator for mobile application developers in the country and a facility devoted to map development.

{mosads}His trip to India on Wednesday will come on the heels of a visit to China that began Monday. Both underscore Apple’s intense interest in tapping markets in Asia.

In China, Cook trying to soothe tensions over the government’s decision to shut down two Apple products — iBooks and iTunes Movies — after they had operated without trouble for months. Cook also just closed a $1 billion investment in a major Chinese ride-hailing service.

India is seen as a major growth market for smartphones, though Apple is not among the top manufacturers of the devices in the country. When Modi visited Silicon Valley last year, he visited with the heads of several major technology firms.

But the country has recently proved to be a difficult market for some. Facebook’s Internet.org saw its Basic Services program, which partners with local telecoms to deliver certain web services free of charge to users, shut down by an Indian regulator because it violated net neutrality principles.