Apple on Wednesday said that it is planning to open retail stores in India.
For over a decade, Apple has relied on third-party sellers and marketplaces for selling its products in the country. It looks like this will be changing soon.
According to analysts, due to the launch of its online store, Apple India’s market share has grown over 2 percent from December 2019 to December 2020. With the launch of online stores, it has offered a wide range of financing and upgrading options such as AppleCare+ and free AirPods with iPhone 11.
"We are also going in there with retail stores in the future, and so we look to that to be another great initiative, and we continue to develop the channel as well,” said Tim Cook, CEO, Apple during the company’s financial results call on Wednesday.
For more than a decade, the premium smartphone maker has struggled to sell its handsets in India. Since consumers can easily buy affordable smartphones from the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, Apple has struggled to increase its user base.
However, Q4 2020 turned out to be the best quarter for a multinational giant in India. It sold over 1.5 million units in the country, up 100 percent YoY, according to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service.
In India, Apple captured the sixth spot in Q4 2020 with more than 170 percent YoY growth in Q4 and over 90 percent YoY growth in 2020. According to Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service, the launch of the iPhone 12, coupled with aggressive offers on the iPhone SE 2020 and iPhone 11 and online expansion drove this growth in the region.
“We are doing several things in the area, we put the online store there, for example, and last quarter was the full first quarter of the online store, and that has gotten a great reaction to it and has helped us achieve the results that we got to last quarter,” Cook said.
"While Apple’s business doubled last quarter, compared to a year ago, “our absolute level of business there is still quite low relative to the size of the opportunity,” he added.
Apple has alluded specific markets before, India being one of them. While it’s market share is very low, the business has roughly doubled over time, which is why Apple is making active efforts to grow the market in the world’s largest smartphone market to date.
Apple Inc
announced results for its fiscal Q1 2021, which ended December 26, 2020. It surpassed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time breaking all records.
