Apple reports record growth in India, worldwide

Due to pandemic-induced lockdown worldwide in the first half of 2020, Apple had to reschedule product launches and had spread them to three separate events in September, October, and November, to unveil a new line of iPads, Watch, iPhone 12 series, and M1-powered Mac.

Despite the challenges, Apple has managed to pull off an impressive double-digit revenue growth in all categories of products and services worldwide and also in India.

Apple reported all-time record revenue of $111.4 billion, up 21 percent year over year growth and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.68, up 35 percent. International sales accounted for 64 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Backed by the fantastic consumer response to the iPhone 12 series, Apple recorded 17% YoY growth. Also, iPad and Mac grew by impressive 41% and 21%, respectively.

Apple's Wearables, Home, and Accessories segments together grew by 30% compared to the previous year. Apple Services too saw a solid 17% YoY growth.

Breakdown of Apple Q1 Fiscal Year 2021 revenue in terms of product categories

In 2020, Apple renewed its focus on India, the world's fastest-growing and second-biggest smartphone market after China. It launched the official online store in September just before the festive season.

Apple shipped 1.5 million iPhone units primarily driven by older iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone SE (2020), and the latest iPhone 12, marking 100% Year-on-Year(YoY) growth compared to the previous year's same festive season (October-December), the best quarter to date. This helped the company to double its market share from less than 2% to 4%, CyberMedia Research reported.

Over-all, Apple shipped more than 6 million iPhones throughout the year 2020, registering 60% (Y-o-Y) growth. 

“This is particularly the case in some of the emerging markets where we’re proud of how we’ve done... If you take India for example, we doubled our business last quarter compared to a year ago but our absolute level of business there is still quite low relative to the size of the opportunity," Tim Cook, CEO, Apple said during the Q1 fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call.

Besides iPhones, Apple also recorded an impressive 135%(Y-o-Y) increase in iPads sales in the October-December period in India. 

Must read | Apple iPhone market share doubles, registers best quarter in India: CMR

"There are several markets I alluded to before, India is one of those, where our share is quite low, it did improve from the year-ago quarter, our business roughly doubled over that period of time, so we feel very good about the trajectory. We are doing a number of 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. 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," Cook added. 

Apple is expected to launch its fully-owned retail store first in Mumbai later this year and also, probably bring one in Bengaluru, a little later.

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