Apple doubles revenue in India in June quarter

Apple’s iPhones led the company’s growth in the Indian market in the quarter ended June 2022. In its earnings call on July 28, the company said that it had doubled its revenue year-on-year in India this quarter.

“We also saw June quarter revenue records in both developed and emerging markets with very strong double-digit growth in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and a near doubling in India," CEO Tim Cook said during the company's quarterly earnings call for June fiscal quarter. 

According to CyberMedia Research, Apple shipped over 1.2 million iPhones in India in the June quarter at a 94% year-on-year (YoY) increase. 

This comes on the back of the record growth for Apple in India last year, when it doubled its smartphone market share and shipped 6 million iPhones, its highest ever for the market. 

Apple's growth in India also belies the current slowdown in smartphone shipments. Market research firm Counterpoint Research, on Thursday, said that smartphone shipments in India fell 5% sequentially. 

Navkendar Singh, associate vice president at IDC India points out that the premium end of the market is seeing growth while demand for lower end devices is tapering. "This is reflective of the income disparity and immense financial stress at the lower end of the market," he added.

According to Singh, Apple is driving a lot of growth with affordability offers, financial tie ups to take care of the upfront high cost of purchase. 

The slide in value of Rupee against US dollar, which is expected to drive up the prices, hasn't impacted Apple consumers either. "Apple has chosen to absorb some of this impact, since there is a serious intent to grow the business now, which is very well being reflected in the numbers getting published," said Singh.

The iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 contributed almost half of iPhone sales in India, he added. To be sure, the company’s market share in the country remains around 3%, Singh added.

In terms of market share in India, Singh said that Apple was at the 7th spot in Q1 CY22 with 3% volume share and at 3rd with around 15% value share in the smartphone market. Value share indicates the portion of the market a company accounts for in terms of total value of devices shipped to the country, while volume share accounts for the number of units.

Though iPhones accounted for the lion's share of Apple's revenue in India, the company has also seen growth in demand for iPads. CMR's Ram said that iPads registered a strong 34% YoY growth in the second quarter. iPad Gen 9 and iPad Air accounted for the majority of the iPad shipments.

The company was the second leading tablet brand in Q1 2022  with 22% market share alongside Samsung, according to CMR. Chinese Lenovo, with 36% market share, was the top brand. 

In terms of global revenue, Apple posted $83 billion in revenue at a 2% YoY  increase and a net profit of $19.4 billion in the June quarter.  Global revenue from the iPhone business during the quarter rose 3% YoY to reach $40.67 billion.

Further, Sanyam Chaurasia, analyst at research firm Canalys also noted that inflation and fall in disposable income had barely any impact on Apple's affluent customer base. He added that Apple also offered "strong deals" on previous generation iPhones on  both online and offline channels in the second quarter. 

In April, industry analysts told Mint that  Apple will grow faster than the rest of the smartphone market. They estimated a 25% higher annual shipment growth for Apple in India in 2022.