In July-September of 2023, Apple’s India revenue was estimated at $2.5 billion. The US-based company’s record India revenue was driven by robust sales of both iPhones and iPad tablets. With sales of its Mac lineup of desktops and laptops also not lagging far behind, Apple is now tipped to lead India’s consumer gadgets market in terms of revenue share.

Excited by the enthusiasm: Tim Cook

“We continue to be excited by the enthusiasm we’re seeing in India, where we set an all-time revenue record. We also opened two new stores during the quarter, and we can’t wait to bring four new stores to customers in India,” chief executive Tim Cook said at Apple’s headquarters at Cupertino, California, in a conference call with investors.

The company declared its quarterly earnings Thursday afternoon US time, which is early Friday morning in India.

This revenue, to be sure, is based on sale of Apple’s products and services in India—and does not take into account exports of its devices from India’s assembly lines.

Apple’s July-September revenue was also its all-time quarterly high.

Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, said that the company saw double-digit sales growth for iPads, which raked in $7 billion in revenue during the September quarter. Apple’s global quarterly revenue was $94.9 billion, of which $70 billion came from hardware sales. Two-thirds of this was contributed by iPhones alone, which brought in $46.7 billion, helped by early demand for its latest smartphone – iPhone 16.

Apple’s India performance remained resilient on the back of discretionary upgrades to its smartphone lineup, which continues to remain aspirational for most buyers in the country. Analysts said that thanks to instant discounts on strategic models, exchange offers, the rise of an organized used-devices market, and easily available credit through financing schemes, the average cost of ownership of an iPhone in India has considerably dipped to become comparable to other smartphones.

All of this has helped Apple scale a quarterly revenue of $3.75-4 billion, as per estimates by three market research firms collated by Mint. Each of the researchers requested anonymity since their final quarterly reports were yet to be published.

In September this year, Mint reported that Apple was on track to see double-digit shipment growth of iPhones. Navkendar Singh, associate vice-president at market researcher IDC India, said, “The demand for iPhones is likely to sustain at least for the time being, and a strong double-digit growth is further expected this year as well. There’s plenty of appetite in the market for the time being, which gives Apple even more room to announce consecutive quarters of record revenue going forward as well.”

An industry note by fellow market researcher Counterpoint further underlined that Apple had a strong festive season as well, leading it to becoming the second-highest grossing brand for smartphones during the September quarter, just behind Samsung.

The Indian consumer gadgets market was estimated to be worth $62 billion in FY24—with Samsung holding 18.5% market share by revenue, ahead of Apple’s 15.3%, based on estimates from three market research firms that Mint spoke with.

By FY25-end, the scales are expected to tip in Apple’s favour: while the market could be worth $70 billion by March 2025, Apple is projected to hold 21.4% of this market versus Samsung’s 19.3%. The increasing demand for premium devices is helping both the brands, but Apple’s sustained growth and ~2.5x the average selling price per gadget over Samsung’s is helping the US brand more than the Korean one.

Apart from iPhone sales, Apple is also seeing an uptick in enterprise PC (personal computer) deals, and the rise of iPads as a category based on the need for larger infotainment displays. In August this year, Ashweej Aithal, research analyst at Canalys, told Mint that with the pricing leverage between premium Windows and Apple PCs lower than ever before, Apple’s market base for Macs and iPads is higher than ever before.

iPhones are expected to generate nearly $11 billion in sales for Apple India this fiscal year, with Mac, iPad, wearables and services likely to bring in another $4-6 billion and setting the company on road to a new annual revenue milestone in the country, the consensus estimates of the researchers cited above said.

However, while India continues to be one of the most important sales and strategic geographies for Apple, the company received a weak response on Wall Street even after it beat most analyst estimates for the quarter. Bloomberg reported that while Apple’s September quarter was stable, weak growth guidance for the December quarter given during the investor call on Thursday—driven particularly by poor demand for iPhones in China—left investors underwhelmed. As a result, the Apple stock closed 1.8% down Thursday at $225.91, and fell another 1.9% to $221.71 in after-hours trading.