Apple is optimistic about its future in India and is committed to investing in the country to drive future growth. The confidence is not unfounded. During the fiscal 2025 first quarter ended December 28, 2024, the Cupertino-based technology giant achieved record results in India, driven by strong iPhone sales.
The iPhone was the top-selling smartphone model in India during the quarter, in fact. Apple still has a relatively small market share in India, but the stupendous success, suggests there’s substantial room for growth, which is a silver lining so to say, given that overall iPhone revenue has gone down a bit (Y-o-Y).
“Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the earnings call. “As you know from past calls, [we are] particularly keen on India. The iPhone was the top selling model in India for the quarter.”
Apple has been on a massive expansion spree in India lately. It launched Apple Store Online in the country in 2020, paving the way for customers to engage directly with the brand for sales and technical support instead of relying on third-party authorised resellers and e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon. It doubled down on online with the recent launch of the Apple Store app India edition in January this year.
Cut to offline, Apple opened its first wave of Apple Stores in Mumbai (BKC) and Delhi (Saket) in April 2023. Buoyed by their success, it has announced additional retail stores in Bengaluru and Pune. Delhi-NCR and Mumbai are set to get their second Apple Store soon.
“India set a December-quarter record during the quarter, and we’re opening more stores there, we’ve announced that we’re going to open four new stores there,” Cook said reiterating Apple’s commitment to expanding its presence in India.
Beyond growing its retail footprint, Apple is also ramping up manufacturing in India. It is making the entire iPhone 16 lineup, including the top-of-the-line iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max models, locally. This is a major step forward in its “Make in India” journey, which began in 2017 and has steadily grown since. Cook didn’t touch upon this aspect while reporting Q1 sales figures. But during the company’s Q2 2024 earnings call, he had categorically mentioned that “From a pragmatic point of view, you need to produce there to be competitive.”
About the Mac, Apple appears to be as optimistic and perhaps, soon, we might get to hear more news on how it plans to expedite the category. For now, things seem to be picking up, particularly on the enterprise side.
“We see strong demand in our emerging markets. For example, Zomato, a leading food ordering and delivery company in India, has deployed thousands of Macs across their workforce to foster innovation,” Apple’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Kevan Parekh, said during the call.
“It’s [India] the second largest smartphone market in the world and the third largest for PCs and tablets, and so there’s a huge market, and we have very modest share in these markets, and so I think there’s lots of upside there, and that’s just one of the emerging markets,” Cook added.
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