Despite the pandemic, 2020 turned out to be a positive year for the US-based tech giant Apple. This is for the very first time that Apple’s revenue grew by over $100 billion on iPhone sales and interestingly India had a significant contribution in the growth, mainly due to the popularity of the iPhone 11 and the iPhone XR. The company is optimistic about the direction Apple is taking to expand its business in the country. Also Read - Flipkart Smartphone Carnival Sale 2021 begins: Discounts on Apple iPhone 12, Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, Moto G 5G and more
Apple posted all-time record revenue of $111.4 billion, up 21 percent year over year (YoY). Speaking to analysts about the market expansion during an earnings call on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “This is particularly the case in some of the emerging markets where we’re proud of how we’ve done… If you take India for example, we doubled our business last quarter compared to a year ago but our absolute level of business there is still quite low relative to the size of the opportunity.” Also Read - Apple discontinues the expensive iMac Pro; to be available until supplies last
Talking specifically about the Indian market, Cook told analysts that “India is one of those where our share is quite low.” He further said that Apple “did improve from the year-ago quarter. Our business roughly doubled over that period of time. And so we feel very good about the trajectory.” Also Read - Apple to launch mixed reality headset in 2022, AR contact lenses to follow in 2030
Stating the reason for the growth Cook said, “we are doing a number of things in the area, we put the online store there for example, and last quarter was the full first quarter of the online store and that has gotten a great reaction to it and has helped us achieve the results that we got to last quarter. We are also going in there with retail stores in the future and so we look to that to be another great initiative, and we continue to develop the channel as well.”
In September last year, Apple launched its online store in India to start selling its products natively. During the earnings call, Cook said that the last quarter was the full first quarter of the online store and revealed it received a “great reaction” from Indian consumers. He highlighted that the online store helped in the quarterly growth. Apple CEO also hinted at bringing more offline stores and said, “We are also going in there with retail stores in the future and so we look to that to be another great initiative, and we continue to develop the channel as well.”
Another report by Counterpoint Research states that Apple has shipped more than 1.5 million iPhones in India in Q4 2020. The report stated that the growth is due to the increase in sales of older-generation including the iPhone 11 and the iPhone SE (2020).
