Apple finally comes to town

A few decades ago, I had an off the record meeting with the Apple India head (they don’t believe in on the record meetings, generally). The executive admitted that there were no major plans for India and there was no chance that Steve Jobs would ever make an official Apple visit here.

This didn’t change for quite a while, but off late, things have heated up. One of the big changes happened due to the pandemic and Apple moved some of its manufacturing from China to India. Now there’s some good news and in the first seven months of the financial year 2024-25, the Freight-on-Board (FOB) value for iPhones manufacture has crossed $10 billion with a projection of $15 billion for the whole year. Apple is quite serious about India as an iPhone hub. The Apple ecosystem around Chennai includes Foxconn, Tata Electronics and Salcomp. They are building hostels that will house more than one lakh employees. This is along the lines of what they did in China.  

Catching up in India

In the USA, more than half of the smartphones sold are iPhones. They generally do well in every geography. In Africa they are in the region of 15% and in India, iPhones had less than 1% share in India pre-pandemic. That is finally up in the range of 4-5% recently and is expected to grow further. Specifically, India is a 5G leader and the second largest smartphone market in the world. So that way, the iPhone is coming to the party quite late.

Said chief executive Tim Cook in the last quarterly earnings meeting, “We continue to be excited by the enthusiasm we are seeing in India, where we set an all-time revenue record.”

He expressed satisfaction that iPad sales achieved double digit growth and said the number of Apple-operated stores would go from 2 to 6 soon. There are stores in Mumbai and NCR and they will get one more each. The additions are Bengaluru and Pune. MacBooks, iMacs and Apple watches are also seeing steady growth. Indian consumers can look forward to Apple Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales every year from now on. 

Apple is doing well on the services front. Apple TV+, Apple Music, iCloud and App Store are just some of the services that have succeeded. Apple has named India as “its own sales territory”. That’s key because India is a $4 trillion economy and has great potential. Apple is finally recognizing that. Only India can give Apple sustainable long-term double-digit growth.

Indian consumers are generally value for money and may shun certain categories of premium products. If Apple can change that, then it may see astronomical growth in India.