The maker of popular smart technology products like the iPhone and MacBook has faced stiff competition here, the world's second-largest smartphone market.
After
two years of downbeat news, Apple,
the premium consumer electronics giant, managed to turn around its
business in India. The management of the US-based entity informed its
investors on Thursday that it registered record sales in this country
during the July-September quarter.
Luca
Maestri, senior vice-president and chief financial officer at Apple
Inc, said in a post-results conference call that they had
“established new Q4 (July-September) records in many major
developed and emerging markets”. Including India, America, Canada,
Germany, France, Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, and
Vietnam. As a result, its gross margin expanded 40 basis points, to
38 per cent.
Maestri
added the company’s laptop and desktop business had record sales in
India. “Despite the tough compare, we generate an all-time revenue
record for Mac in the US and in India.” The maker of popular smart
technology products like the iPhone and MacBook has faced stiff
competition here, the world’s second-largest smartphone market.
After shipping in 3.2 million units in 2017, the India unit of Apple
sold only 1.7 million units of iPhones in 2018.
More,
in October-December 2018, it failed to capture top spot in the
premium smartphone market, after years. It fell behind OnePlus (36
per cent market share), with 30 per cent share. In April-June 2019,
its share in the above Rs 30,000 price segment fell further — to 21
per cent — and slipped to third spot, behind OnePlus and Samsung.
The
firm, however, left no stone unturned to regain top spot this festive
season. From new and competitively-priced iPhones
to slashing prices of its older models, it had a multi-pronged
strategy. The entry-level new iPhone model — iPhone 11 — was
priced Rs 64,900, or 15.6 per cent less than the XR variant of 2018.
The model is priced even lower than the iPhone X, launched at Rs
70,990 only two years ago.
Also,
to capture the country’s shopping mood ahead of the festive season,
the new iPhones were made available from September 27 in India, three
days ahead of its global launch. According to Navkendar Singh,
research director at IDC, the launch date could have been advanced to
align it with the upcoming Big Billion Days sale by Flipkart
(starting September 29) and similar shopping events that were
expected to kick off by the last week of that month.
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