iPhone Sales in India Double; BlackBerry’s Crisis, Apple’s Opportunity

Apple announced its second quarter results today. While its net profits and revenues saw a marginal increase over the previous quarter, its India sales doubled.

The company’s strategy to tie up with distributors such as Redington and Ingram Micro and also announce different financing schemes in India seem to be paying dividends.

iPhone sales in India grew by 55% YoY, while it sold over 43.7 million units of the iPhone during the quarter globally. Apple said that organisations that are using iPhone and iOS systemically are driving Apple’s sales in India. Deutsche bank is using 20,000 iPhones within the company.

Earlier, corporate users were mostly on BlackBerry. But the Canadian phone maker’s failure to innovate and hang on to the market it once owned is now giving space to larger rivals like Apple and Samsung.

Apple has been pushing its growth in the India market aggressively. Moves taken in India over the last year, include:

• March 2014 – Apple announces launch of neighbourhood stores in India

• Feb 2014 – Apple restarts iPhone 4 production in India to take on Samsung

• Jan 2014 – Targets Indian schools with the launch of iBooks textbooks

• Began selling the iPhone 5 in India barely 5 weeks after the global launch

• First to offer buyback and installment schemes for customers

The company had a revenue of $45.6 Bn and net profit of $10.2 billion over the previous quarter. This is a 5% rise in revenues, and a 7% rise in net profits QoQ.