Apple Inc is planning to bring back in-house some of the back-end technology work that it had earlier outsourced to Indian technology services vendors.

The company is likely to start with “insourcing” the support for Apple Stores — nearly 500 of them are in operation across 19 countries currently — before moving on to other services that were earlier outsourced.

As always, Apple is secretive about its plans and the details are sketchy at best. From what we know, Apple currently outsources some of its non-core operations to Infosys and Cognizant Technologies.

“So far, the impact is small,” said a second source, who requested anonymity, too. “The plan is, to do the production support of Apple Store systems starting with POS and then move on to POS maintenance and enhancements.” (POS is short for point of sales.)

But recent comments by the Apple CEO Tim Cook to the Indian media indicate that bigger plans are afoot at the Cupertino-headquartered consumer electronics giant.

Cook on his visit to India in May had said in an interview: “We have thought through many areas (of investment) and we will move ahead in all these areas. What we have announced in Hyderabad and Bengaluru are just a couple of initial things, there’s more coming.”

While the company’s contribution to the revenues of Indian technology vendors is not known, they have been providing development and maintenance support for the iTunes store and Apple is one among their top customers.

In May, Apple opened a development office in Hyderabad to focus on maps for Apple products. “This investment will accelerate Maps development and create up to 4,000 jobs,” the company had said in a statement. Apple also announced that it will set up an iOS design and development centre in Bengaluru to support iOS developers in the country.

Spokespersons from Apple and Cognizant declined to comment on the story. Infosys did not reply to an e-mail sent last week. Last year, FactorDaily’s Editor-in-Chief Pankaj Mishra, then with The Economic Times, had that the company is evaluating options to set up a captive development centre in the country.

Apple which sold over 40 million iPhones in the third quarter of 2016, said that iPhone sales in India grew 51% without disclosing how many units it sold in the country. The company’s revenueshit $1 billion in India for the year ending 31 March 2015. Its overall revenues for the year was $233.7 billion.

Also read: Everything you need to know about Apple’s love-hate relationship with India

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