Apple records strong March quarter growth, sees major opportunity in India: Tim Cook

Apple posted record March quarter revenue with strong double-digit growth across emerging markets, including India. CEO Tim Cook highlighted India’s expanding middle class and low market share as key growth opportunities, signalling continued investment and expansion in the country.

New Delhi: US tech giant Apple achieved March quarter revenue records and saw double-digit growth in nearly every emerging market, including India, according to its CEO Tim Cook.

He said, “We set March quarter revenue records and grew double digits in every geographic segment including strong double-digit growth in Greater China and the rest of Asia-Pacific”.

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“We also achieved March quarter revenue records in both developed and emerging markets and saw double-digit growth in nearly every emerging market we track, including India,” he said during the analysts’ call after posting robust results for the January-March quarter.

Cook further stated that “We were also thrilled to open the doors to our sixth store in India”.

“It has been wonderful to see how we’ve continued to grow in India in recent years, part of our larger efforts to connect with even more customers and emerging markets all over the world,” he said.

On a question on how are you seeing the market in India evolve around the base of iPhones and the opportunity of kind of a rising middle class, Cook said “I think it’s a huge opportunity for us”.

“We’ve been focused on this for a while. It’s the second largest smartphone market in the world and the third-largest PC market, and despite doing extremely well there for quite some time we still have a modest share. And so I think that really speaks to the opportunity that we have,” said Cook.

“There are a lot of people moving into the middle class there, and we’ve got some great products for them both currently and coming. And if you look at the majority of customers in all of our categories from the iPhone to the Mac to the iPad to the Watch, are new to that product there. And so it speaks very well to growing the installed base there. Net-net, I’m over the moon excited about India,” Cook added.

iPhone revenue was $57 billion, up 22 per cent year-over-year, driven by the iPhone 17 family.

“iPhone grew double digits in the majority of markets we track, including the U.S., Latin America, Greater China, Western Europe, India, Japan, and Southeast Asia,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple CFO.

Mac revenue was $8.4 billion, up 6 per cent year over year, driven by the strength of the recent product launches, including MacBook Neo.

“We grew in both developed and emerging markets, with double-digit growth in many emerging markets, including India and Indonesia,” Parekh noted.

During the quarter, over half of the customers who purchased an iPad were new to the product.

“Many of these customers are in our emerging markets, where we grew iPad revenue by double digits, including in India, Mexico, and Thailand. And based on the latest reports from 451 Research, customer satisfaction was 98 per cent in the US,” according to the company.

Notably, incoming Apple CEO John Ternus also made his earnings debut.