Apple putting lot of energy in Indian market: Tim Cook
Apple Inc is putting a lot of energy in India with an aim to launch all its initiatives, including retail, in the country where it has an "extremely low" overall market share, the technology giant's CEO Tim Cook has said during Apple's second quarter 2018 earnings call yesterday. India, the third largest smartphone market in the world, has huge opportunities for Apple, Cook said.
Cook said they're investing enormously on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks in Indian markets. Cook noted that infrastructure in India has come "quite a ways" since Apple began to put a lot of energy in Indian market "because of their leadership". Apple's CFO Luca Maestri said Apple's Mac set a new March quarter revenue record, including new records in both Americas and Greater China.
"We sold 4.1mn Macs, generating year-over-year growth in many emerging markets including Latin America, Middle East and Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and India," Maestri said. Cook said in India, Apple set a new first-half record. Describing India as a "huge market", Cook said many people will be moving into middle-class over time, referring to tremendous consumer opportunity that it presents to global companies.
On China, Cook said he believes it is a phenomenal country with lots of opportunities both from a market and an app developer point of view. Apple has almost 2 million application developers in China writing apps for iOS and App Store, and "they're doing unbelievably creative work and innovative work. So we look at China holistically, not only as a market," he said.
Cook was asked if he feels the iPhone market is saturated and not much room is left for growth even as potential exists in emerging market India. "I don't buy the view that market's saturated. Smartphone market is the best market for a consumer product company in world's history. It's a terrific-market, and we're very happy to be a part of it," he said.
He highlighted that in terms of market in general, last year there were still half-a-billion feature phones sold in world, with many of these being sold in emerging markets. "And we still believe that over time every phone sold will be a smartphone. And so it seems to us that with that many feature phones being sold, that's a pretty big opportunity," Cook said.
Cook acknowledged that in terms of the iPhone itself, Apple's market share globally is low and its sales are low compared to the full market of smartphones even though Apple sells quite a few phones over the course of a year. He said their task is to convince people to buy iPhone while switching phones or buy another iPhone, if they already have one.
Apple posted quarterly revenue of $61.1bn for its fiscal 2018 second quarter ended March 31, 2018, an increase of 16% from the quarter a year ago. The company's net income for the second quarter was $13.8bn, up from $11bn a year ago. Cook said it was Apple's best March quarter ever, with strong revenue growth in iPhones, services, and wearables.
"Customers chose iPhone X more than any other iPhone each week in the March quarter, just as they did following its launch in the December quarter. We also grew revenue in all of our geographic segments, with over 20% growth in Greater China and Japan," Tim Cook said. Apple sold 52.2 million iPhones in the second quarter of 2018.
