High iPhone price tag creates record in India, but iPhone 12 price cut strategy helped too
Apple Inc. had its strongest quarter for iPhone sales in India yet, a sign the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is finally making progress in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. Sales increased to 2.3 million units in the fourth quarter, up 34% from a year earlier, according to numbers from the market research firm Counterpoint. China’s Xiaomi Corp. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. sold 9.3 million and 7.2 million smartphones for the quarter respectively, leading in terms of units. Apple appears to have pulled in more revenue than any of its rivals, however, because of the high iPhone price tag, according to Counterpoint’s calculations. However, during the recent October to December period, India’s festival buying and gifting season, the phone maker announced an iPhone 12 price cut to under 50,000 rupees ($668), offering cashback incentives and easy payment plans.
The U.S. company took in an estimated $2.09 billion for the quarter, edging aside Samsung with revenue of about $2 billion. “It’s a turning point for Apple in India,” said Neil Shah, the Mumbai-based partner and research head at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. “Indians were willing to lavish money on premium phones during the pandemic because everyone’s lives revolved around their devices and there was nothing else to spend on.”
While Apple has become the most valuable company in the world on the popularity of its iPhone, it has struggled in the 1.3 billion-person India market. The high iPhone price puts the phone far beyond the reach of many local consumers, a situation aggravated by stiff import tariffs Apple had to pay on devices made outside the country.
In 2018, the company stumbled through multiple top-level executive departures
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