At the Q1, 2023 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that India was an exciting market for the company and was “a major focus”.
Beginning with the production of the iPhone SE in 2020 for the local market, Apple has increased its production share in India over the year. The production issues faced in China due to its COVID-19 policy and political differences with Washington, the tech giant has been diversifying its supply chain out of the country.
In late 2022, the company began production of the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus in the country only a few months after the launch of the latest iPhone 14 series out of China and is going to open its first retail stores in the country.
India is a profitable market for iPhone as China says Apple
Analyst, Harsh Kumar from Piper Sandler asked about Apple’s share in India, an emerging market, and China and what would its achievable share in iPhones in both countries.
Yeah. Hey. Tim, I had a quick question on emerging markets. Seems like you’re making a lot of strides in India.
Potentially wanted to understand the kind of share you have in China and India. And relative to that, what would be your aspirational but sort of achievable share in iPhones in those territories, whether it’s units or revenues? And I was hoping to draw on your experience and maybe what you’ve seen in other countries where you’ve had some longer presence.
CEO Tim Cook said that the company has seen double digits growth in India in spite of the headwinds. The company has a major focus on India as it is an exciting market and its iPhone share in India and China grew in the last quarter, along with the rest of the world.
And looking at the business in India, we set a quarterly revenue record and grew very strong double digits year over year. And so we feel very good about how we performed, and that was — that’s despite the headwinds that we’ve talked about. Taking a step back, India is hugely exciting market for us and is a major focus. We brought the online store there in 2020.
We will soon bring Apple retail there. So we’re putting a lot of emphasis on the market. There’s been a lot done from a financing options and trade-ins to make products more affordable and give people more options to buy. And so there’s a lot going on there.
We are, in essence, taking what we learned in China years ago and how we scale to China and bringing that to bear. And I don’t have the exact market shares in front of me, but I think you would see that from a market share point of view that we grew around the world last quarter despite — on iPhone despite the challenges that we’ve had on the supply side. And I wouldn’t expect to have a difference in those two markets.
Recently, it was reported that Apple has begun production of AirPods components in India which are shipped to China and Vietnam for assembly. Previously, Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal said that the tech giant was going to increase its production share in the country up to 25% from the current 5% to 7% at a conference promoting India as a competitive manufacturing destination.
