Price drops of Apple products in India has led to ‘better results’: CEO Tim Cook

In response to an analyst’s question at Apple’s Q2 2019 earning, CEO Tim Cook said that the pricing action the company took in the Indian market gave better results. Cook noted that the pricing change on some of its iPhone models in India had improved results for Apple in the country. He also said that the company has learnt from its recent Chinese market strategies and it will now cater the Indian consumers accordingly. The CEO also said that India was a challenging market in the short term but Apple is more interested in the long term benefits and potential from the country. And seeing India’s dominance over the smartphone market, Cook’s strategy and viewpoint is fair and profitable for the company on the long run.

About its lessons from China, earlier Apple had to adjust the prices of its products because of the falling sales. Cook also said that Apple has already made adjustments on the pricing to the country and the results after that has been positive. About its products prices in India, earlier Apple had discounted the price of its iPhone XR from Rs 76,900 to Rs 59,990 last month.

Tim Cook was quoted saying, “We have made some adjustments in India and we’ve seen preliminarily some better results there. Everything that we do (referring to pricing actions in China), does advise everything we do in the future so we try to learn the best we can and fold that into our thinking.”

Cook also commented about the importance of the Indian market for his company and he said that Apple is trying to expand its reach in India. To fulfill the local demands of the Indian consumers of iPhones, the company is trying to increase its manufacturing capabilities. The company has also set an assembling plant for the iPhone 7 with its supplier Wistron in Bengaluru. Wistron already assembles iPhone 6s in India but Cook has planned to further increase the manufacturing capabilities in India.

“I think India is a very important market in the long-term. It’s a challenging market in the short-term. But we’re learning a lot. We have started manufacturing there which is very important to be able to serve the market in a reasonable way. And we’re growing that capability there,” the CEO added.

Other than manufacturing plants, the Cupertino-based company is also planning to launch its own branded showrooms in India for which it is talking with the government. “We would like to place retail stores there. And we’re working with the government to seek approval to do that. And so, we plan on going in there with sort of all of our might,” said Cook.

It should also be noted that the Cupertino-based company had earlier said that the company won’t be reducing its products’ prices and it wanted to maintain its ‘premium device’ nametag. But the high prices of the iPhones were not received well in the country and thus after some time the sales of the smartphones in India dwindled. So, changing its strategy and using the lessons from its China’s fall might be a good decision for the company.