Samsung make further inroads in market.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: Apple registered a sharp decline in its sales in India during the first three months of 2013. This comes at a time when the company is pondering over how to increase its penetration in India, which is the third largest growing smartphone market in the world.
Apple’s sales in India skyrocketed in November soon after the release of iPhone 5, the new addition to its smartphone segment, reported The Times of India.
Manasi Yadav, who tracks India’s smartphone market for researcher IDC, was quoted by the Times as saying: “The October-December quarter was an exceptional one for iPhone, but that hasn’t been the case since then,”.
Apple sold 120,000 iPhones in India during January and March which is way below 230,000 in October–December last year, forcing the shares to fall from 4.7% to 2.1%. Samsung, which by now has earned the name “apple’s rival” also succeeded in gaining respectable market share in India. Samsung has 40% share of the smartphone market in India and people responded to their marketing campaigns and offers positively, which is a big set-back for Apple, said the Times report.
The fall in the sales of Apple has affected its largest distributor in India, Redington which sold Rs. 1,100 crores worth of iPhones in the last quarter of 2012. Analysts are estimating that this could fall below Rs. 800 crore in 2013 if the sales don’t improve.
Apple has been facing the heat globally over its products. Earlier this week an iPhone5 user in China died after being electrocuted while trying to make a call from her smartphone, which was plugged in for charging.