Apple India logs record sales, re-enters list of top 10 smartphone brands

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.

Business Standard

Apple iPhone XR: Cheaper, but as powerful as iPhone XS-series smartphones

In an era of skyrocketing smartphone prices, it's a relief that Apple's $750 iPhone is just as powerful and nearly as capable as its $1,000 counterparts, our reviewer found.

Business Standard :Good news, Apple loyalists: You won’t have to burn $1,000 on your next iPhone. That’s because for about $750, you can have the iPhone XR, which is just as fast and nearly as capable as its more expensive counterparts.

The cheaper iPhone, which becomes available this Friday, is the model that most people should buy. This year’s other iPhones — namely the XS and XS Max devices, which cost about $1,000 and $1,100 and are already in stores — are luxury devices better suited for enthusiasts willing to spend a premium for superior cameras or a jumbo screen.

For everyone else, the XR is perfectly adequate and has few downsides. Its 6.1-inch screen, which is based on LCD, an older display technology, looks ever so slightly inferior to the OLED screens on the XS phones — but you would need to be a movie buff to notice the difference.

The XR’s single-lens camera is also less capable than the dual-lens cameras on the XS models. Yet the XR can still produce very satisfying photos of people using portrait mode, also known as the bokeh effect, which puts the picture’s main subject in sharp focus while gently blurring the background.

The XR is slightly less durable than its more expensive cousins. Its glass back is not as tough as the one on the XS. Its casing, or chassis, is composed of aluminum instead of the more robust stainless steel on the costlier phones. Yet these differences are negligible. (I recommend that people use a case to protect those parts of the phone anyway; carrying a phone without a case is a bit like driving a car without bumpers.)

All of these minor negatives add up to a win for price-conscious consumers, especially as smartphone prices keep climbing — iPhones a few years ago started at about $650, while prices for Android phones from Google and Samsung have also shot up to between $700 and $1,000.

After I tested an XR for four days, here are the highlights.

A bright and vibrant display

Apple developed a new kind of LCD to improve color accuracy and squeeze the XR’s screen into the corners of the phone. The result is what Apple calls a Liquid Retina display, which looks better — brighter and more vibrant — than past iPhone LCD screens.

I confess that I struggled to see a difference between the Liquid Retina screen and the OLED on an iPhone XS. The distinction is most evident in blacks: If you look at a photo taken in the dark, you will notice that the blacks on the XR’s screen have a faint blue glow, which is coming from the backlight used to illuminate the screen, while the blacks on the XS look darker and more realistic because the OLED technology turns off individual pixels to make them black... Read More

Newly-launched Apple iPhones, Watch Series 4 now on sale globally

The new iPhones and Apple Watch Series 4 will be available in India starting September 28.

Apple has announced that its newly-launched iPhone XR, XS, XS Max and 'Watch Series 4' are going on sale globally from Friday.

The new iPhones and Apple Watch Series 4 will be available in India starting September 28.

In India, one would have to shell out Rs 12,075 a month, as zero-cost EMI, for a period of one year to own the 512GB variant of iPhone XS Max -- the most expensive iPhone released this month -- that would cost Rs 1,44,900.

The iPhone XS with 512GB storage model would be priced Rs 134,900 and the cheapest of the lot, iPhone XR (64GB)would hit the shelves at a starting price of Rs 76,900 in India.

The iPhone XS and XS Max support dual SIM and dual standby functionality and are fuelled by Apple's latest A12 Bionic chipset built on 7-nm design and a new neural engine with an 8-core dedicated machine learning (ML) processor.

ALSO READ: Apple leads global premium phone market; OnePlus enters top 5: Counterpoint

The devices also come with upgraded 12MP + 12MP camera, 2x optical zoom, improved TrueTone quad-LED flash and 7MP RGB camera sensor in the front.

The iPhone XR sports a 6.1-inch LCD screen with liquid Retina display and a single 12MP camera at the rear, all in an aluminium body.

The next generation Apple Watch features edge-to-edge display and comes with support to track heartbeat data, heart rhythm and notify users.

Apple officially introduced its 2018 line-up of iPhones and Apple Watch at an event in California last week.

Article Source Business Standard