In India’s high-end smartphone market, it has a 43% share. Apple ranks third, with a share of about half of one plus.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Zhixiang Network” (ID: Passagegroup) by Anthony.
Earlier this month, Apple launched its largest franchise flagship store in Mumbai, India’s largest city. The Apple Premium Dealership (FAPR) store, which occupies two floors of the High Street Phoenix mall in Mumbai, covers an area of 8,000 square feet (about 743 square meters) and will showcase Apple’s full range of products in India.
High Street Phoenix is Mumbai’s most popular high-end shopping mall with over 500 brands, many of which are internationally renowned luxury brands.
Before, in the quarter ended June this year, Apple India’s revenue increased by 3% quarter-on-quarter and double-digit year-on-year. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the financial conference call as of June that “we are very happy with this”, and the excitement is beyond words.
IDC’s data shows that in China, Apple’s market share in the fourth quarter of 2017 was 12.9%, and in the fourth quarter of 2018 it was 11.5%. According to CINNOResearch, Apple’s smartphone market share in China was 8.6% in the first half of 2019.
The research institute Aurora Big Data also pointed out in the report that in the first quarter of this year, the number of users of iPhones switching to Huawei phones in the Chinese market increased from 12.6% to 16%, and the proportion of conversions is still rising.
It’s not hard to understand that India’s rebound is not inconsistent with Apple’s fortune, and it’s no wonder that Cook is so beautiful. It’s not hard to understand that Apple opened India’s largest flagship store and backwaters.Strong determination of the war.
However, another cruel reality is that according to the report of the Indian high-end smartphone market in the second quarter of 2019 released by the researcher Counterpoint, one plus from China, once again lead the Indian high-end smartphone market with a market share of 43% ( About 3,000 yuan or more, Samsung ranked second, Apple can only stay after the two, the share is even less than half of the increase.
Global smartphone sales continue to decline, and in China, the largest smartphone market, Apple’s market share is deteriorating. Can India be a stimulating battlefield for its “Jesus Survival”?
“India has bounced back” and the largest flagship store has opened
Gartner, a well-known research company, said in a report released in July that this year will be the worst year for smartphone sales to date. Looking at the world, according to the mobile phone market research report released by many organizations, although their research data is not the same, they all point to one point: global smartphone shipments continue to decline.
IDC data shows that global smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2019 were 310 million units, down 6.6% from last year; Canalys data shows that global smartphones in the first quarter of 2019 Shipments were 313.9 million units, down 6.8%, which was the sixth consecutive quarterly decline and reached its lowest level in the past five years; Counterpoint’s data showed that global smartphone shipments were 345 million units, shipping The volume dropped by 5% year-on-year, which is the sixth consecutive quarter of global smartphone market decline in shipments.
In the global sales decline, the Indian market is unique, and it is one of the few markets in the global smartphone market. According to the latest research report by market research firm Strategy Analytics, in the second quarter of 2019, India’s smartphone shipments were 35.6 million units, up 3% year-on-year.
In this emerging market, which is second only to China, Apple also caught up with the trend in the second quarter. The quarterly revenue increased by 3% quarter-on-quarter and the year-on-year growth rate was double-digit.
Know that in the first few quarters, Apple India’s revenue has been falling sharply. Counterpoint Research data shows that in the first quarter of this year, iPhOne sales in India plummeted 42% and sold only about 220,000.
As a comparison, in terms of brand shipments, Xiaomi India’s shipments in the second quarter exceeded 10 million, ranking first with 10.2 million. Samsung shipped 9.4 million units, up 15% year-on-year, followed. Secondly, vivo, OPPO and realme are ranked three to five, with shipments of 3.9 million, 2.9 million and 2.8 million respectively.
Therefore, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a quarterly call conference in June 2019 that “India has rebounded. During the quarter, we resumed growth.”
“We are very satisfied with this.” On a fixed exchange rate basis, revenues in emerging markets have risen.
Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri gave a detailed account on the earnings call, winning back growth in emerging markets……India and Brazil have grown by double digits, “We created in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. New third quarter (fiscal) record.”
“From a regional perspective, the year-on-year growth rate of emerging markets has improved significantly compared to the first half of the fiscal year, especially in the BRIC countries, which increased by 3% in the first quarter of June. The performance has dropped by 25% year-on-year,” added Luca Maestri.
Good things are double. Just a few days later, Apple launched its largest franchise flagship store in Mumbai, covering an area of 8,000 square feet, occupying two floors of the High Street Phoenix mall in Mumbai.
“This is India’s largest Apple flagship store,” said Sutinder Singh, founder of Aptronix, which runs the store. Aptronix has operated more than 30 Apple franchise stores in different cities. “This store will provide the best Apple experience in India.”
Singh said the store will also sell third-party products such as Apple accessories, health and fitness products.
Earlier reports indicated that Apple announced in January that it plans to launch six large outlets (5,000 square feet) in India this year, three of which are in NCR and Mumbai in Delhi. Currently iPhone manufacturers are shipping in IndiaThe store’s stores are typically 1,500 square feet, and the new large FAPR store will be three times larger than the current average. The final situation is that the Mumbai flagship store is more than five times the average point of sale in Apple India.
India requires a single-brand company with a foreign investment of over 51% to purchase 30% of its products locally. As a result, Apple’s single-brand retail applications have been stagnant for years and cannot open their own stores in India. Apple is currently seeking to open a franchise store in India, an important and growing market for US technology giants.
According to foreign media reports, in 2008, Apple introduced the iPhone to India. The initial goal for the iPhone was to attract Indian affluent class through high-end retail stores, but later expanded its target customers to the middle class through monthly payment plans. . By 2015, Apple’s annual sales in India increased from around $100 million in 2011 to more than $1 billion.
And this growth rate has also caught the attention of Cook and Apple headquarters executives. According to people familiar with the matter, “Cook wants to make India the next growth market for Apple, and has drawn up a five-year plan to increase Apple’s sales in India to $5 billion by 2020.” Span>
Two major pieces of growth: Software & Accessories
In fact, this year’s iPhone sales are going through the bottom, and iPhone sales fell to less than half of the quarter’s revenue this quarter, the first time in seven years.
So, what is Apple’s growth in emerging markets?
The answer is internet services and accessories. Tim Cook said that this change has enabled Apple to successfully diversify from a single product.
At the spring new product launch, Cook came to the fore: “Today’s press conference is all about service.” In other words, Apple’s spring conference began “All In service.” This has caused many people to be caught off guards – Apple has always been a hardware company, whether it is the Macintosh computer 20 years ago, the iPod 15 years ago or the iPhone 10 years ago, Apple is full of these hardware earned Full.
But ten years after the launch of the iPhone, both the iPhone and the entire mobile phone market have begun to show signs of decline. Although Apple released three new iPhones in September last year, the iPhone’s shipments in the fourth quarter of 2018 fell by 11.5%, and the iPhone’s annual shipments also fell by 3.2%..
However, after 12 years of iPhone release, Apple still has not found a breakthrough point for the next smart device. Faced with revenue pressure, the iPhone’s vitality is languishing, so software services and accessories are almost the only antidote.
Cook said that in mainland China, the total number of Apple device users increased in the third quarter, which helped to increase its service market, and its sales in mainland China increased by more than 10%. Cook told Reuters: “In fact, we are growing in mainland China. Non-iPhone revenues have increased by 17%. We have grown in all categories except the iPhone.”
In the global market, software services revenue increased by 12.6% to $11.46 billion. Although the growth rate slowed slightly, slightly lower than expected, revenues set a new record. In addition, revenue from wearables and other accessories increased by nearly 50%, exceeding expectations.
Apple did not give an active number of devices, but in January it said that the number was 1.4 billion, of which 900 million were iPhones. Investors use this number (Installed Base) as the basis for how many users they can get from their service business.
In July, Cook told investors on a conference call that Apple had 420 million paying users who used Apple’s services and third-party applications. The company has set a goal of expanding it to 500 million by 2020.
Trip Miller, managing partner of Apple shareholder Gullane Capital, said he wants to see the service business grow to 20% and believes Apple needs to buy billions of dollars in cash. Media assets to promote its upcoming TV service.
Miller said: “We must have a larger customer base and provide services that people derive value from.”
As of the June quarter, Apple’s Mac and iPad products saw growth in revenues in India and other emerging and developed markets. In addition, Apple continues to work on accessories.
For example, recently, Apple has begun to intervene users to replace the battery from the three manufacturers themselves. After the speed gate, Apple launched a battery health function for iOS, allowing users to check the battery health. Now, after replacing the three-party battery, the iOS system will pop up a battery message “Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery. Healthinformation not Available for this battery (can’t confirm that your iPhone is using Apple’s original battery, battery information will not be available). That is to say, this part of the device will not be able to view “battery health”, or even manually slow down.
On August 12th, a USB-C digital audio and video multi-port converter has been officially launched on the official website of Apple. The number of interfaces of the new expansion dock is unchanged, but the HDMI support standard is raised to 2.0, so that the user can directly output 4K 60Hz picture signal. The expansion dock costs 486 yuan, which is basically twice that of a third party.
In terms of service, Apple has been racking its brains. This month, the much-watched Apple Card has finally unveiled its mystery. Apple said that when you use Apple credit card to buy things, the cash back will be returned directly to the Apple credit card on the same day, instead of cash back every month, for example, using Apple Card spending can unconditionally cash back 1%, with Apple Pay can pay back 2%, and you can get 3% cash back when you buy goods in Apple Mall. There is no limit on the amount of cash returned, and you can get it the next day.
There is news that after reaching an agreement with Goldman Sachs, Apple may charge twice as much for this credit card as a regular card, but it is still a win-win project – for Apple, credit cards can Get more recurring revenue from iPhone users and further integrate them into their service network, and Goldman Sachs has acquired a large number of retail users.
Stars in the sea or a red sea?
India’s largest flagship store + software service + wearable device + accessories, looks like a 360-degree combination of no dead ends, but can this boxing method make a smooth ride in India?
The results are still unpredictable.
A report released by market research firm IDC shows that in the first quarter of 2019, although global smartphone sales fell by 6% year-on-year, sales in the Indian smartphone market increased by 7.1% year-on-year. It reached 30.1 million units.
As one of the few smartphone markets in the world that is still growing, India’s competition is fierce. In the mobile phone industry in India, every month, we see a lot of new equipment, and the brands compete with each other to maintain their market share. The top five of vivo, OPPO and realme, shipments were 3.9 million, 2.9 million and 2.8 million, respectively, the gap is not particularly large, but also shows the intensity of competition.
Some foreign media listed the top 20 mobile phones in India in June, but there is no iPhone. 
Even in India’s high-end mobile phone market (more than 3,000 yuan), according to the global market research organization Counterpoint released in the 2019 Q2 quarter of India’s high-end mobile phone market share, you can find that in the minds of consumers The popular Apple has become the third, and the first is actually a domestic mobile phone brand.
43% of the market share means that in India’s high-end smartphone market, basically every two mobile phones sold, one of them is one plus. According to Counterpoint’s report, after only one month of launching in India, the One Plus 7 Pro gained 26% of the market share of India’s high-end smartphone market, accounting for almost a quarter of India’s high-end machine market.
One plus 7 Pro, one plus equipped with the first 2K+ resolution, 90Hz refresh rate AMOLED display, with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform processor, up to 12GB RAM + 256GB ROM storage configuration, The ultra-high configuration of UFS 3.0 flash memory has become a competitive product in the local market in India. The user experience has improved.
In contrast, in addition to constantly losing in the marketThe Apple company is also losing its “soul” in succession, and its products lose the innovative genes.
On June 28, Apple announced a number of appointments. Among them, the most deplorable fruit powder is that Apple chief design officer Jonathan Ivey will leave the company later this year. On the same day, affected by this news, Apple’s market value also evaporated by 9 billion US dollars.
About Jonathan’s departure, he said in an interview with the media that it was mainly because Cook was not interested in product development, and some new products were even seen for the first time in the actual operation area after the Apple conference. To. In addition, Cook’s Apple is more focused on operations and performance, the design department is no longer as high as the Jobs era.
This directly brings down the product experience. According to data from Counterpoint Research, in the first quarter of this year, iPhone sales in India plummeted 42%, selling only about 220,000. At the beginning of the second quarter, iPhone sales rebounded from the promotion and discounts, but finally fell again at the end of the quarter. The agency also expects Apple’s total iPhone sales in India this year is expected to be 1.5-1.6 million units, down 10-17% from last year. This is also the worst performance of Apple in India in the past four or five years.
In fact, although Apple’s revenue increased in the second quarter, its profits were declining. In the second quarter, Apple’s revenue was $53.8 billion, and its quarterly net profit was $10 billion. In the same period last year, its revenue was $53.3 billion, and its quarterly net profit was $11.5 billion.
Price is undoubtedly another important reason. According to data released by Counterpoint Research, the largest shipments (by sales volume) in India have been in the price range of 10,000-15,000 rupees, but this share has fallen from 32% in the June 2018 quarter to March 2019. 30%, and further dropped to 27% from April to June this year.
Analysts attribute this shift to consumers who are willing to open their wallets and spend on upgrades in the smartphone space – a smartphone line that goes up to Rs 15,000-20,000. The share of such products doubled in June, from 8% in the same period last year to nearly 16%.
but legacyUnfortunately, 10,000-15,000 rupees of smartphones include some products from Xiaomi, OPPO and Samsung. The 15000-20000 rupee price is dominated by Redmi K20, a high-end product recently launched by Samsung, vivo and Xiaomi.
The high-end market is becoming another beneficiary as Indian consumers mature and begin to enter higher-priced and quality mobile phones. In the June quarter, shipments in the high-end market (over 30,000 rupees) increased by nearly 33% annually.
Counterpoint research analyst AnshikaJain said: “The growth in this area is mainly driven by the launch of the OnePlus 7 series flagship product.” In terms of market share, the high-end market share in June was 4%. , an increase of 3% over the same period last year.
But in a word, Apple is far from enjoying the bonus of this wave of consumer upgrades.