India at a tipping point, couldn’t be more delighted: Apple CEO Tim Cook

At the earnings call after Apple announced its “better than expected” second quarter results quarterly revenue of $94.8 billion, down 3 percent year over year, Cook said: “We set an all-time record for Services and a March quarter record for iPhone. We were particularly pleased with the performance we saw in emerging markets and achieved all-time records in Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE, as well as a number of March quarter records, including in Brazil, Malaysia and India.”

Cook said the company had set a quarterly record in India where its business “grew very strong, double digits year-over-year”. “So it was quite a good quarter for us, taking a step back, India is an incredibly exciting market. It’s a major focus for us. I was just there, and the dynamism in the market, the vibrancy is unbelievable.” The Apple CEO noted how over time the company has been expanding its operations in India “to serve more customers”. He added: “We’ve got a number of channel partners in the country as well that we’re partnering with, and we’re very happy with how that’s going overall.

Overall, I couldn’t be more delighted and excited by the enthusiasm I’m seeing for the brand there. There are a lot of people coming into the middle class, and I really feel that India is at a tipping point, and it’s great to be there.”

Cook said he was seeing a lot of people entering the middle class in India and was “hopeful that we can convince some number of them to buy an iPhone and we’ll see how that works out”. However, he accepted that ARPUs are lower in India for whether you’re talking about TV and movie streaming or music, the ARPUs are “much lower” in India than other regions, “but if you look at it over a long arc of time, I think there’s a good opportunity across the board”.