Apple Makes Strides in India as Global Competition Heats Up 

As Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo claw away more ground in the world’s smartphone market, Apple is finding growth in one country in particular: India.

On Monday, details emerged in a Bloomberg report that the Cupertino giant’s subcontinent strategy is starting to pay off.

Planting Seeds

Industry reports published this week by market research firms Counterpoint and IDC bring both good news and bad news for Apple. The good: Global smartphone shipments increased to 45.2 million units in the second quarter, per IDC, letting Apple maintain its longtime No. 2 position behind Samsung (though Apple’s roughly 1.5% year-over-year growth rate lagged behind the roughly 6% industry-wide growth rate estimated by both research firms). The bad: Its global market share is starting to slip, from around 16.6% in the second-quarter last year to 15.8% this year. Meanwhile, Xiaomi (14.8%) and Vivo (9.1%) both saw market share increases of over 1%.

As the global market becomes increasingly competitive, Apple has turned toward India — with its rising middle class — as a way to diversify its revenue stream (not to mention its concurrent plan to turn the country into a manufacturing hub). While the Big Tech player doesn’t break out India sales in its earnings reports, laws mandate it report sales figures to local authorities. Sources with knowledge of those figures shared with Bloomberg details on how Apple’s seeds in India are now starting to sprout:

• Apple’s total sales in India in the 12 months ending in March reached almost $8 billion, the sources said, a roughly 33% increase from the year prior; iPhone sales accounted for more than half of that revenue.
• For perspective: There are currently just 690 million smartphones in circulation in the nation of 1.4 billion people, with iPhones accounting for just 3.5% of the market, per Counterpoint research. Still, according to some estimates, India’s smartphone market could increase from around $44 billion to $88 billion by 2032.

$8 billion still amounts to a relatively small slice of the entire Apple pie. In its last fiscal year, the company drew around $72 billion in sales in China (China’s per capita GDP is around five times higher than India’s). The sales figure marked a slight cool-down from the year prior.

Antitrust Me: While India may offer a major growth opportunity for Apple, it still has one thing in common with markets where sales have all but leveled out: antitrust scrutiny. Over the weekend, Reuters reported that an investigation by India’s antitrust body concluded Apple had unfairly abused its control of its app store by forcing developers to use its proprietary in-app purchase system. Gee, is anywhere safe for global tech mega-corporations these days?