Apple Posts Record Quarterly Revenue in India as Mac Sales Rise

Apple on Wednesday announced its financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of the year. The Cupertino, California-based company posted a quarterly revenue of $64 billon (roughly Rs. 4,53,000 crores), with international sales accounting for 60 percent of it. The revenue was up 2 percent year-over-year and beat analyst expectations. The company also revealed that it established new Q4 earnings record in India and several other markets, including the US, Brazil, and various South-East Asian countries. With the stellar Q4 showing, Apple seems to have had an overall decent year in India.

Apple didn't share any specifics about its India revenue, but Luca Maestri, Apple CFO, did note that the company posted an all-time record for Mac revenue in the country, as well as in the US.

“[…] we generated an all-time revenue record for Mac in the US and in India and a fourth quarter revenue record in Japan,” Maestri said. “More than half of the customers purchasing Macs during the quarter were new to Mac, and the active installed base of Macs again reached a new all-time high.”

As mentioned, this Mac revenue alongside iPhone, iPad, Wearables, and Services revenues helped the company post a Q4 record in India.

“At a country level, we established new Q4 records in many major developed and emerging markets including the US, Canada, Germany, France, Korea, Singapore, Brazil, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam,” Maestri noted during the Apple earnings call. The company had also set third quarter revenue records in South-East Asian markets like the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

During its Q2 earnings call earlier this year, the company had noted that it has set “first-half record” in India, and as a part of the Q3 earnings call, Apple claimed to have seen double digit growth. Q1 earnings were, however, were apparently not so great for the company in India. The iPhone maker had not even mentioned India during its Q1 earnings call in January. It had blamed weak macro-conditions as well as poor iPhone upgrades for its dismal performance in all emerging markets.

Coming back to the Q4 2019 earnings, overall in terms of emerging markets Apple said that it has seen a favourable response to iPhone price corrections.

“I think that the price moves we've made have been smart and well received and do show a level of elasticity, but the most important thing by far is the product,” Tim Cook said while answering a question during the call.

“[…]I think it's product first, and then prices sort of falls out of that, and we did decide to be more aggressive. And looking at the results in the early going, I think it was the right call.”

“In terms of emerging markets we picked sort of locally relevant prices, and in some cases where the dollar had become stronger, we took an exchange rate that would have reflected a while back, instead of the current exchange rate.”

Apple also revealed that it has set Q4 records for wearables in every single market, including India.

“Wearables, Home and Accessories established a new fourth quarter record with revenue of $6.5 billion, up 54% year-over-year with growth accelerating from the third quarter across all five geographic segments,” Maestri detailed.

“The performance was driven by tremendous growth across Apple Watch, AirPods, BIS products and accessories. And as Tim mentioned, we set Q4 records for our Wearables category in every single market we track around the world.”

To remind you, Apple's fiscal year ends the last business day of September and this year, it fell on September 28.