India May Be Apple’s New Big Market

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 15, 6:50AM EDT

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) has faced problems with iPhone sales since the introduction of the iPhone 15.
India may be the next successful frontier for the consumer electronics giant.

As iPhone sales have faltered worldwide and in the huge Chinese market, India may be the next successful frontier for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). Because China is the world’s largest smartphone country, investors have been concerned about the company’s performance there.

India is tied with China as the largest country in the world based on population. Some estimates even put India ahead at just over 1.4 billion. Bloomberg reports that iPhone sales in India grew 33% in the year that ended in March to $8 billion. India’s smartphone users overwhelmingly have phones that run on Alphabet’s Android OS. Apple’s market share in India is only 3.5%. Bloomberg also points out that Apple recently started to manufacture iPhones there.

Apple has faced problems with iPhone sales since the introduction of the iPhone 15. One research company said Apple’s China sales dropped 24% in the first six weeks of this year. Other research shows that Apple sales in the country have recently steadied. One issue has been that the iPhone 15 may not be substantially different from the iPhone 14 in the view of consumers. The primary upgrades were the camera and processor.

In the most recently reported quarter, iPhone revenue fell to $46.0 billion from $51.3 billion in the year-ago quarter. Greater China revenue decreased from $17.8 billion to $16.4 billion. Apple’s next quarterly report is in early August.

While India may be one catalyst for revenue improvement, the next chance for a surge in sales is the introduction of the iPhone 16. It will be the first iPhone with next-generation AI features. Even with an improvement in India, the AI strategy has to be successful for Apple to get back on a growth track.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.