Apple Inc’s iPhone sales are set to dip by about a quarter in India’s holiday season this quarter, putting them on course for the first full-year fall in four years, industry research firm Counterpoint Research said on Saturday.
The Cupertino, California-based company’s struggle to break through with India’s 1.3 billion people swung more sharply into focus this week after Apple blamed a disappointing set of sales forecasts on a handful of big emerging markets.
Chief executive Tim Cook said after publishing Apple’s third-quarter results that sales were flat in India in the fourth quarter, which includes a month-long festive season culminating this week in Diwali — a bumper period for electronics sales.
Neil Shah, research director at Hong Kong-based Counterpoint, said that the firm’s channel checks pointed to numbers for this quarter in the range of 700,000 to 800,000 units, down from about 1 million a year earlier.
For this year, Apple was set to sell about 2 million smartphones — a drop of about 1 million from last year, he said, as Indians baulk at high prices for the devices, driven by trade tariffs and a weak rupee.
“Sales are set to drop for the first time in four years,” Shah said. “If you look at Q3 — it was 900k last year and this [year] is almost 450k.”
“Iphones have gone costlier and the features and specs aren’t that compelling. The install base of Android has grown vastly; the new customer base [for Apple] is not coming,” he said.
Cook on Thursday last week called the company’s problems in India “speed bumps along a very long journey” and most analysts have said that the prestige of Apple’s brand should allow it to claim back lost ground as Indians’ spending power continues to grow.
While more than half of the phones sold this year were older iPhone models, high selling prices meant Apple’s Indian revenue should still be flat or slightly higher than a year earlier, Shah said.
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