Apple CEO Tim Cook is bullish, says India where China was several years ago

Apple’s Q3 numbers were actually better than estimates with the company posting quarterly revenue of $45.4 billion and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.67.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook said he was really happy with how production of iPhone SE was progressing in India.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday said he sees a lot of similarities between India and where China was several years ago. Taking questions at Apple’s third quarter earnings call, Cook said: “ I’m very, very bullish and very, very optimistic about India.”

Underlining Apple’s investments in India, Cook said they have already launched an app accelerator centre which was on “top of working with the channel” and was looking at expanding our go-to-market in general. He also mentioned the start of production for iPhone SE in India during this quarter and said the company was “really happy with how that’s going”. “So we’re bringing all of our energies to bear there,” he said in reply to a question on how he saw the India market.

Apple looks at India as its next growth market since numbers in greater China have not been that great of late. Incidentally, revenue from both Greater China and Rest of Asia showed a sequential dip of -25 and -28 per cent respectively this quarter. But China was also a 10 per cent drop compared to last year. However, Cook said China was “actually flat year-over-year during Q3” and the company was actually up 6 per cent constant currency terms.

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Apple’s Q3 numbers were actually better than estimates with the company posting quarterly revenue of $45.4 billion and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.67. In comparison, revenue was $42.4 billion and earnings per diluted share $1.42 in the year-ago quarter. Interestingly, international sales made up 61 per cent of the quarter’s revenue.

“With revenue up 7 per cent year-over-year, we’re happy to report our third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth and an all-time quarterly record for Services revenue,” said Cook in a release.

Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO, said they had reported unit and revenue growth in all product categories in the June quarter, driving 17 per cent growth in earnings per share. “We also returned $11.7 billion to investors during the quarter, bringing cumulative capital returns under our program to almost $223 billion.”

While services have been doing well for Apple over the past few quarters, the interesting success story this time is the iPad which has shown a 28 per cent growth in numbers and revenue compared to last quarter. Apple launched its new iPad Pro at the WWDC in June.