Apple recorded a sharp 30-40% decline in shipments in the first quarter. This takes the dropped count close to 600,000-700,000 units in Q1 till June. Covid-induced restrictions have disrupted the sales numbers of many industry leaders. Apple too has suffered the same fate. The tech mammoth had consecutively crossed a million sales for the last 2 quarters.
With inventories being flooded with the premium American brand’s devices, sharp discounts and offers are being announced to boost sales. Amazon has also announced deals, offers, and discounts up to Rs 9,000 on Apple products like the iPhone 12 series, iPhone 11 Pro Series, iPad Mini, and MacBook Pro. This is a part of its 6-day Apple sales festival. Market trackers are optimistic about a boost in the sales of Apple devices. With special price cuts in the pre-festive quarter, e-commerce companies could offer this sales boost.
Analysing the situation!
Here is what Prachir Singh, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research, had to say about the situation: “Given the sales rally that Apple was seeing for the past nine months since the launch of the very attractive iPhone 12 series, the demand forecasts for the entire year were quite optimistic. Naturally, the second wave (of Covid-19) has largely impacted the premium segment devices coming from top eight tier-1 cities.”
Counterpoint’s Prachir Singh also mentioned that with Apple’s contract manufacturers Foxconn and Wistron starting expansions in their India operations, the import of iPhones has seen a huge dip in just 6-months. Offline retailers even mentioned that imported Apple iPhone models (12 Pro and 12 Pro Max), have gone out of stock. They also mentioned that locally manufactured iPhone models have maintained a robust supply and demand since COVID hit.
Research firm Strategy Analytics suggests that Apple will double its market share to 3.8% in 2021 from 1.9% in 2020. There might have been a decline in Q1 numbers but they can turn their fates as soon as the next iPhone series releases. Apple has recordest their highest sales numbers across all of their product for the previous 3 quarters, Apple was the number one premium brand having a 48% share of the phone market price.
