Apple shipments in India drop by 33% with 97% Smartphones running on Android

Recently, Apple is facing a bit of downfall when it comes to its sales numbers. The company’s quarterly result for the last couple of quarters have not been impressive and since then Apple is putting a lot of efforts to pull back. In one such effort, the company decided to sell refurbished phones in India as a way to get around the high prices of its devices. Apple also proposed to the Government a program to offer refurbished phones in the country.

This kind of makes sense, since in a price-sensitive market like India, usually these kinds of workaround can do wonders. But it is expected that it might take a long time to be implemented and until then the company may continue to see a downfall. According to data from Strategy Analytics, shipments of Apple iOS on smartphones fell to 800,000 in the second quarter from 1.2 million from last year.

The market share of iOS on smartphones also dropped to 2.4 percent from 4.5 percent a year ago. On the other hand, Android saw its share increased to over 97 percent from 90 percent in the same quarter last year. It is also reported that Android smartphone shipments grew to 29.8 million in the second quarter from 23.2 million in the same quarter last year. This is mainly because a large number of vendors for these smartphones in the country include Indian brands.

Apple also launched the cheaper iPhone SE in an attempt to take over this part of the market segment, but it clearly didn’t work out for them as expected. However, we can’t conclude that Apple is not making any efforts to do well in Indian market. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is also said to have discussed with the India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, about the possibilities of Manufacturing and Retailing in India. This would essentially allow the company to avoid the high import duties on smartphones and other products that the authorities have imposed.

Apple does not publish numbers for its India sales but according to reports, it is estimated that its shipments did not cross 1 million units in a quarter in the country at any given point. Well, looking at these numbers, we can only expect Apple to bring something new to the table in order to regain it’s market share. But just recently the company sold over a Billion iPhones across the globe since it was first launched. Stay tuned for info on this.