Apple Struggling to Find Footing in India as iPhone Sales Numbers Decline

• Apple has let go of three key executives in the Indian subcontinent in a bid to reshape its business strategy in India.
• Apple has been unable to compete against manufacturers like Xiaomi and Samsung who are currently dominating the Indian market.
• The tech giant set up its own manufacturing plant in the Indian subcontinent to compete in the price sensitive market, but sales numbers have been declining over the financial quarters.

Apple India’s national sales and distribution chief, head of commercial channels and mid-market business, and the head of telecom carrier sales have been released by the company following a sales decline in the Indian subcontinent. High tariffs and the price-sensitive nature of the Indian market have prevented Apple from finding success in the Indian market despite setting up manufacturing units to produce the competitively-priced iPhone SE and iPhone 6S. Apple has yet to manufacture its newer devices in the country and is seeing low sales numbers in not only in the subcontinent but also globally with only 3.1 million iPhones shipped worldwide in 2017.

Xiaomi overtook Samsung as the number one manufacturer in India with competitively priced devices. Samsung responded by opening the world’s largest phone factory recently in India to compete against the Chinese brand. However, Apple is yet to make impactful investments to establish itself in the market which has over 1.3 billion citizens.

Only 400 million out of the 1.3 billion citizens use smartphones, making it a largely untapped market. Apple CEO Tim Cook has suggested India has the potential to be the next China, but Apple’s pricing strategy has been less than feasible for most people in the market.

Counterpoint Research Director Neil Shah revealed “iPhone India sales were weak in the first half of 2018 and, even if they show a big jump in the traditionally strong second half, Apple will still fall short of last year. It has not put great focus or investments into India because the market is so minuscule, it’s a Catch-22 situation for Apple in India”. The world’s largest company needs to step up if it wants to catch up against the competition.

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