Out of 158 Mn smartphone shipments, Apple ships 1.9 Mn iPhones in India in 2019

Apple has gradually improved its iPhone shipments in India in 2019 compared to the previous year shipping close to 1.9 million smartphones, almost a lakh more than what it did in 2018.  

In 2019, 158 million smartphones were shipped in India.

iPhone sales have been improving largely due to strong demand, aggressive pricing and strong promotion strategy by Apple India on its latest iPhone models including iPhone11 series and iPhone XR, which emerged as Apple’s best selling with 33% of total Apple’s smartphone sales in nine months.

"The EMI along with cashback offers on iPhone 11 series especially iPhone 11 did well during the important festive launch," said Tarun Pathak,  associate director at a market research firm Counterpoint Research .

Besides, the fastest ever roll out in India for Apple in last year happened during the festive season.

In the last few years, Apple market share in the premium smartphone segment in total smartphone sales has witnessed a minor improvement. In 2019, Apple commanded 4% of total smartphone sales in India.

According to Counterpoint’s data, India’s premium segment is growing at a 20% rate, almost doubling the roughly 10% growth of the local smartphone market overall.  Though, Apple’s market share beyond the premium category has continuously gone down to 1 % in last year.

For Apple, India has been an important market.  Though it witnessed 70% downfall in profit in FY19.

In FY19, a huge chunk of stock in trade and spare parts were imported from overseas vendors, and the company spent Rs 6,785.7 crores in forex to pay for the same.

Apple India posted a total revenue of Rs 10,538.2 crore in FY19 from Rs 13,048.7 crore in the previous fiscal.

And it has been deploying a new strategy to win in the market. 

As part of Apple’s revived plan, the tech giant has committed fresh investment of $1 billion through its partners in the country. The iPhone maker also plans to kick off the export of ‘Made in India’ iPhones across the world.

Initially, Apple had begun with a limited production of smartphones in India. It has been assembling iPhone SE and 6S in the country through third party assembler Wistron.

Apple also eyes to serve the local demand for latest models like the costlier iPhone X, XS and XS Max from its own plant in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.

"On an annual level, Apple's shipments are set to rebound in India with an estimated YoY growth of 6%. This is compared to a 43% decline it had during 2018, thanks to the price correction of iPhone XR, a revamped channel strategy and expansion of local manufacturing in India", added Pathak.