Apple's June quarter revenue in India hit another record as the iPhone maker posted strong double-digit growth in the world's second-largest smartphone market.
The performance of the stores opened in India this spring exceeded the company's initial expectations, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook says in the company's post-earnings analyst call.
"We did hit a June quarter revenue record in India, and we grew strong double digits. We also opened our first 2 retail stores during the quarter. And it's early going currently, but they're beating our expectation in terms of how they're doing," he says, without disclosing any numbers.
Apple continues to work on building out this channel and putting more investment in its direct-to-consumer offers as well, Cook says. "I think if you look at it, it's the second-largest smartphone market in the world. So we ought to be doing really well there. And where I'm really pleased with our growth there, we still have a very, very modest and low share in the smartphone market. And so I think that it's a huge opportunity for us. And we're putting all of our energies in making that occur," says Cook.
These comments come as the Cupertino, California-based company's revenue declined for the third straight quarter. The iPhone maker's revenue fell 1% year-on-year to $81.8 billion during the April-June quarter.
The world's most valuable firm will continue to roll out more stores. "We continue to roll out more stores. As you know, we just opened 2 in India last quarter. There are still a lot of countries out there that don't have Apple stores that we would like to go into. And so we continue to see it as a key part of how we go to market and love the experience that we can provide customers there," says Cook.
"We continued to see strong results in emerging markets, driven by robust sales of iPhone with June quarter total revenue records in India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE. We set June quarter records in a number of other countries as well, including France, the Netherlands and Austria. And we set an all-time revenue record in Services driven by more than $1 billion paid subscriptions," he adds.
Apple's iPhone revenue was $39.7 billion, down 2% year-over-year but grew on a constant currency basis.
"We set revenue records in several markets around the world, including an all-time record in India and June quarter records in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K. Our iPhone active installed base grew to a new all-time high, thanks to a June quarter record in switchers," says Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Apple's iPhone 13 and OnePlus’ Nord CE3 Lite were the highest-shipped 5G models in India during the June quarter.