Apple’s making a big push in India, and it appears to be paying off. According to an article in The Times of India, Apple India’s revenue already rose by a factor of three last year, and analysts there expect the current brisk sales of iPhones to boost the company’s bottom line to over $1 billion in the current year.
While Apple does not disclose financials for the Indian sales unit, it does file with the Indian Registrar of Companies. In that filing, Apple reported a 431 percent rise in net profit this year, which the Times attributes to iPhone sales.
For Apple to really compete with Samsung in terms of global smartphone marketshare, many analysts believe Apple will have to release a cheaper iPhone to appeal to customers in India and China.
As talk of a cheaper iPhone has ramped up over the last few months, Apple is also planning to increase its presence in India by tripling the number of exclusive authorized reseller stores in the country from 65 to 200 by 2015.
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is one of our favorite Apple analysts in the entire world. Mostly because his Apple predictions are usually horribly wrong.
After the disastrous Apple TV SDK Event rumor he created earlier in the month, Misek is back with a new note to Apple investors, and it’s not a happy one. According to Misek, Apple is about to face a very rough two-year period, and he might actually be right.
Multi-touch? Pah, that’s so last year. Gestures are where it’s at. Only yesterday, we reported on a prototype wrist-mounted motion detector; today, we’re trying out Flutter, a free OS X app that we first mentioned back in March when it was still a demo.
Now it’s available in the Mac App Store. It claims to put gesture controls at your, um, fingertips, using your Mac’s built-in webcam.
Apple is expected to sell the iPhone 5 directly in India this time around.
The iPhone 5 is expected to launch in India on October 26, more than seven weeks after making its debut in the United States. The device is also expected to come with “wider availability” than previous models, which were hard to get hold of, and should come with a similar price to the iPhone 4S when that first launched in India.
It could be several years before India gets its first Apple store.
Apple’s retail stores bring in customers like no other retail outlet on the planet, and so it’s no surprise the Cupertino company is keen to build more of them. One possible market for expansion could be India, where Apple is currently forced to sell its products through distributors. However, one Indian retail rule, which states foreign companies must source 30% of the value of their sales from local firms, could stand in its way.
The new iPad is now available in 57 markets worldwide, China not included.
Apple continues its rollout of the new iPad in nine additional countries today, making the sought-after tablet available in 57 markets worldwide. This is now the fourth phase of rollouts since the device made its debut on March 16, but one of Apple’s key territories is still without it.
The Foxconn army is probably bigger than your country's army
Apple’s main supplier pal Foxconn is massive. With multiple mega-factories that can include up to 400,000 workers living on a cramped “campus,” it’s no surprise that Foxconn has quickly become one of the biggest companies in the world. They employ more people than Apple. Not only that, but they’re actually the 10th largest employer in the world, which is freaking enormous when you consider that the US Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer with 3.2 million employees. Foxconn, on the other hand, is just a few notches below them with 1.2million employees. Amazing!
Do you know anyone that owns an Android tablet? I sure as heck don’t, but they have to exist out there in the wild just like the rare and fabled Sumatran white rhinoceros, which native legend has supposedly living deep in the Indian rain forests. Which is rarer? But I digress. My point is that right now, Apple’s iPad is pretty much the only tablet you’ll see other people using because Apple is beating the pulp out of Android tablets with their massive sales numbers, and Apple maintains the momentum from the launch of the new iPad nothing will stop them.
Apple could be set to bring its popular retail stores to India following the Indian government’s decision to allow 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) claims Apple is already interested in opening stores in India, with the Cupertino company reportedly in the process of finalizing its business plan.