“Apple grew its India net profit for the year ended March 2017 by 44% at Rs 373.4 crore [US$56.15 million], according to the Cupertino-based iPhone maker’s latest regulatory filings made to the Registrar of Companies (RoC),” Writankar Mukherjee reports for The Economic Times. “Apple India’s total income (including other income) grew by 17% to touch Rs 11,704.5 crore in FY17, up from Rs 9,997.6 crore in the previous fiscal.”
“Apple India has ploughed back its FY17 profit into the operations, which had aggregate surplus of Rs 1,556.5 crore as of March 2017,” Mukherjee reports. “A senior industry executive said this will be used for further expansion of local operations.”
“Counterpoint has analyzed that Apple’s iPhone X model nabbed 35% of the global smartphone market’s profit during the October-December quarter, making it the most profitable smartphone followed by iPhone 8, with 19% of the industry’s profit, and iPhone 8 Plus with 15% profit share,” Mukherjee reports. “In fact, Apple had earned 90% of the global industry’s profits during the quarter with its entire portfolio, as per the researcher.”
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MacDailyNews Take: The headroom for growth in India is virtually limitless. If Apple can move iPhone into lower price points while maintaining profitability and quality, their India operations will benefit especially.
India is a headache for every business, not just Apple, that govt will claw back on the profit via unethical means. India is a perfect low income country that Apple should stay out of as they are cheap and ideal for Samsung to penetrate. MDN’s take is incorrect when it says India growth is virtually limitless, the reality on the ground do not match the exaggerated propaganda of the marketing people. Apple is getting greedy for market share and this is the kind of thing Steve Jobs would accuse Microsoft of doing. Also Steve Jobs visited India many years ago (before Apple) and he was not impressed with it.
India has a very large, aspirational middle class who are an excellent prospect for Apple’s business. Many manufacturers of high end goods are enjoying tremendous sales growth in India.
Like any country, including America, there is a lot of poverty and incredible wealth too, but most people are somewhere in between.
Indians are very highly motivated to improve their fortunes and are prepared to study hard and work hard in order to enjoy a better life. When you take into account the fact that India has a relatively young population and a moderately high birth rate, they are on track to be the world’s most populous country any time now. Any large corporation would be insane to ignore such a significant market opportunity.
India is not an easy country to deal with because their administrators and government operate in ways which seem hard to understand for outsiders, but exactly the same was said about China and Apple did the groundwork in China and has reaped the rewards.
Apple is a company which does not settle for the easiest solution and is prepared to put in a huge amount of effort to get a great result.
Would probably have to grow 2 orders of magnitude to reach China’s net income level.