Apple doubled its business in India and Vietnam during the fiscal 2021, chief executive Tim Cook said during the company's earnings conference call on October 28.
"During the fiscal 2021, we earned nearly one-third of our revenue from emerging markets. We set quarterly records in every geographic segment with strong double-digit growth across the board. We are optimistic about the future, especially as we see strong demand for our new products" Cook said.
Apple does not provide a country-wise split of its business, but it crossed a record two million shipments for the first time in Q3, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. It said iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 accounted for almost 62 percent of the shipments. The Cupertino tech giant clocked around 3.2 million shipments in the entire 2020.
"Apple had the strongest lineup in India in the past year that contributed to the growth. Apart from this, the pandemic-induced trends worked in favor of iPad, Mac, Airpods, and services growth as well in India. The strong product demand along with a dedicated channel strategy helped Apple to grow in India" said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research.
Apple currently leads India's premium smartphone market (>Rs 30,000) with a 44 percent share and ultra-premium segment (> Rs 45,000) with a 74 percent share, according to Counterpoint Research.
Overall, Apple clocked net sales of $38.9 billion from its iPhone business for the quarter ended September 25, 2021, while sales from its Mac business was at $9.18 billion, iPad at $8.3 billion sales and the wearables, home and accessories segment registered $8.8 billion in sales.
Cook said this is despite the larger-than-expected supply constraints. "We estimate these constraints had around a $6 billion revenue dollar impact, driven primarily by industry-wide silicon shortages and Covid-related manufacturing disruptions" he said.
Apple's services business, which includes App Store sales, cloud services, music, video, advertising, AppleCare, and payment services, hit an all-time record of $18.3 billion for the quarter, a 26 percent increase year-over-year.
"We now have more than 745 million paid subscriptions across the services on our platform, which is up more than 160 million from last year and nearly 5 times the number of paid subscriptions we had less than five years ago" Apple CFO Luca Maestri said during the earnings conference call.
That said, Apple is facing intense scrutiny from regulators across the world over the App Store's business practices. During the call, Cook weighed in on the topic, saying they are very focused on discussing the privacy and security elements of the App Store with the regulators and legislators.
"What we’re doing is working to explain the decisions that we’ve made that are key to keeping the privacy and security (on the App Store), which is to not have sideloading and not have alternate ways on the iPhone, where it opens up the iPhone to unreviewed apps and also get by the privacy restrictions that we put on the App Store." Cook said.
He said these elements have produced a very trusted environment for both consumers and developers over the years "That’s sort of number one on our list. Everything else is a distant second" Cook said.
