Apple CEO Tim Cook 'very, very pleased' on India emerging as Apple's growth engine

Apple has once again called India an exciting market for the company as it recorded yet another stellar quarter in the country. Without revealing numbers, Apple acknowledged registering strong a double-digit growth in India, even though the company’s Q12024 revenue was down 4 percent year-over-year.

"We did grow strong double-digit (in India). And so we were very, very pleased about it. It was a new March quarter revenue record for us," said Apple CEO Tim Cook, who visited India in April for 2023 inaugurating the company’s first Apple Store in the country.

In recent years, India has become one of the handful of countries and regions where Apple has established new revenue benchmarks. The other markets are Latin America, the Middle East, Canada, Spain and Turkey.

The Apple also CEO reiterated his claim about India being “an incredibly exciting market and it’s a major focus for us.”

Cracking the code

After more than 15 years since the unveiling of the first iPhone, the device remains as the most coveted brand in personal technology in India. Apple has consistently made strategic investments in the country over the years to maintain this edge.

“Apple’s diversified distribution, attractive finance schemes and aggressive marketing especially across the e-commerce channels and APRs for the older and cheaper iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 series, significantly lowered the entry barriers for the aspirational users to enter the Apple ecosystem,” Neil Shah, Counterpoint Research’s Partner & Research VP, told Business Today.

As the Indian market undergoes a transformation towards premiumisation, the latest iPhone models are recording remarkable success for the world most valuable company. Apple is capitalising on the trend, leveraging the growing number of smartphone users seeking to upgrade to a more aspirational premium phone for the third or fourth time.

The efforts reaped dividend with Apple’s growth momentum for Q12024 being driven by the latest-generation iPhone 15 series (62 percent) followed by the iPhone 14 series (30 percent), said CyberMedia Research (CMR). 

This has contributed to roughly half of the Rs 50,000+ premium segment in January-March 2024 quarter, and roughly 6 percent volume share of the total market in Q1 according to Counterpoint Research’s preliminary numbers.

Apple has also changed its earlier stand of treating India as a residual market and not giving it the attention it deserved.

Faisal Kawoosa, founder and Chief Analyst at Techarc does not attribute Apple's growth in India to any of their strategies. “It's the 'step up' behaviour of consumers wanting to buy next in segment phones. So, a lot of mid to premium users in India accumulated over these years become potential buyers of Apple, which continues to be the most aspirational brand for personal tech,” he said.

Prabhu Ram, Head of Industry Intelligence Group (IIG) at CyberMedia Research (CMR), pointed out that given the headwinds that Apple faces in the EU and China, India continues to be a pivotal growth market for the brand over the next decade.

"Apple’s ramped-up Make-in-India production capabilities, along with its online and strong offline retail foray are making the brand accessible to more Indians than before,” added Prabhu Ram.

Not just iPhones

While iPhones are the biggest growth drivers, for Apple, in India, the company is also investing in operations in the country. “We have both operational things going on and we have go-to-market, and initiatives going on. We just opened a couple of stores as last year, and we see enormous opportunity there” stated Cook during the earnings call.

He added that Apple is continuing to expand its channels, and also working on the developer ecosystem as well. “And we've been very pleased that there is a rapidly-growing base of developers there. And so, we're working all of the entire ecosystem from developer to the market to operations, the whole thing. And I just -- I could not be more excited and enthusiastic about it.”

Apple has also ramped up its manufacturing in India with Cook acknowledging that “in terms of the operational side or supply chain side, we are producing there, from a pragmatic point of view, you need to produce there to be competitive.”

Beyond developers, India is also a focus country for Apple’s sustainability initiatives. The company working with partners in India and the US to replenish 100 percent of the water it uses in places that need it most, with the goal of delivering billions of gallons of water benefits over the next two decades.