Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook said that despite the recent tremendous success, the company still has a lot of room for growth. Cook said in a call with investors that Apple has recorded double-digit growth in iPhone, iPad and Mac sales in India and other emerging markets in the March quarter. This increase in sales has come at a time when the broader Indian smartphone market has seen its weakest quarter in the last six years due to pressure from rising component costs and low demand. Handset shipments declined by 3-5 per cent year-on-year in the March quarter as price hikes significantly impacted demand in the market.
Apple’s market in India
Upasana Joshi, research manager, IDC India, reported in ET that despite aggressive discounting and reduction in affordability programs in Q1’26 compared to previous quarters, Apple achieved strong double-digit growth in value terms. IDC said that the iPhone 17 series contributed 60 percent of Apple’s total shipments in India in the March quarter. According to Counterpoint Research, driven by the continued momentum of the iPhone 17 series, Apple remains the largest player in the Indian smartphone market with over 25 percent value share and 9 percent volume share. Tarun Pathak, Research Director, Counterpoint Research, said this growth is the result of the multi-focused approach adopted across its products, channels and operations.
War had less impact
He further said that apart from the iPhone, it was also a solid quarter for Apple in the Mac and iPad categories as its attractiveness in India is now stronger than ever. As a result, the company saw a record number of users entering the Apple ecosystem during the quarter. Cook said that Apple did not face any obstacles in obtaining memory chips during the current shortage. Cook said that in the December quarter, we had very little impact due to memory.
We saw an increase in memory costs in the March quarter, which was partially offset by gains from the inventory we already had. However, Apple expects a significant increase in memory costs in the June quarter, which will be partially offset by existing inventory. After the current quarter, Cook warned that rising memory costs would have an increasing impact on Apple’s business. The company is considering several options to deal with this increase in prices.
Opportunities for further growth in India
Commenting on the Indian market, Cook said that many people in India are joining the middle class. If you look at the majority of customers across all of our categories—from iPhone to Mac, iPad, and Watch—they are new to that product. So, this is a very good sign of our user base (install base) growing there. Overall, I am very excited about India. Cook said during a call with analysts on Friday that I think this is a huge opportunity for us. We’ve been paying attention to this for some time. It is the second largest smartphone market and the third largest PC market in the world. Despite performing very well in India for a long time, our market share is still low.
