Apple just passed $10bn in India, a country where it charges more than it does at home

Apple has crossed $10bn in annual sales in India for the first time. The milestone says as much about where the company is heading as where it has been. Revenue for the year to March topped $10bn, Bloomberg reported. That is up from about $9bn a year earlier, and $6bn two years before. iPhones made up the bulk of it.

The odd part is how Apple got there. It charges Indians more than Americans for the same phone. The entry iPhone 17 sells for 82,900 rupees, about $870. In the US it is $799. High local taxes drive the gap, in a country where average incomes run to a few thousand dollars a year.

The headline figure even undersells the growth. The rupee has fallen about 10% against the dollar since early last year. So the $10bn understates how much Apple actually sold in local terms. Growth still ran at a double-digit percentage rate, and demand for iPads and MacBooks rose too.

To soften the prices, Apple leans on financing. It partners with banks for credit-card rebates and instalment deals, pushes student discounts, and takes trade-ins. It is the same playbook it uses at home. Apple will not cut the premium, so it turns the price into a monthly payment most buyers can stomach.

A hedge that works twice

India matters to Apple for two reasons at once, and that is what makes the number more than a curiosity. It is one of the few big markets where sales are still climbing fast. It is also the factory floor Apple is using to move production out of China.

Roughly one in four iPhones is now assembled in India. Most are bound for the US, routed there to avoid tariffs on Chinese goods. Counterpoint Research expects India to build 26% of the world’s iPhones this year, up from 6% four years ago. New Delhi has helped, scrapping component duties and proposing to extend tax breaks Apple lobbied for.

The timing sharpens the contrast with China. Apple’s most recent quarterly sales there came in at $18.8bn, below what analysts wanted. Huawei frequently outsells it in that market. As US-China relations sour, a growing, friendlier India looks less like a side bet and more like a necessity.

Still early days

For all that, Apple has barely built a shopfront. It only opened an online store in India in 2020. Tim Cook cut the ribbon on the first two physical stores, in Mumbai and New Delhi, in 2023. A sixth opened in Mumbai in February. That is six stores for 1.4 billion people.

India is still a sliver of the business of the world’s most valuable company. Its pricing keeps the iPhone a luxury there. But Cook keeps calling it one of Apple’s fastest-growing markets, and the figures now back him.

Apple has found a country that pays premium prices it will not charge at home. It also builds the phones Apple can no longer rely on China to make. The retail push is only starting.