Alongside, the analysts said the Cupertino-based tech giant is also likely to crack the top 5 in India in terms of number of phones sold, a big feat for the premium, high-priced smartphone maker that started selling its phones in the country in 2008.
The $15 billion revenue estimate, if realised, would be almost twice the $7.9 billion the company earned in India in FY24, according to its regulatory filing with the ministry of corporate affairs (MoCA). To be sure, the FY24 figure is largely based on its sales in 2023. While its FY25 filing is awaited (likely later this year), analysts projected it to report around $11 billion.
Of course, the revenue would also include organically increasing sales of the company’s iPad tablets, AirPods (headphones) and the Mac line of desktops and laptops. An estimated 70% of Apple’s revenue in India comes from the iPhone, according to Tarun Pathak, partner and director at Counterpoint, and the rest from other products.
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Apple did not respond to Mint’s queries on India growth projections till press time.
What has helped the company’s cause is its attempt to sell Mac laptops to enterprises, a senior industry consultant said, requesting anonymity. Over the past year, Apple signed deals with homegrown tech services firms Wipro and Zoho to offer Macs at their workstations.
All this has ensured that Apple today has the strongest pitch to market an ecosystem of products, and not just standalone devices, said Prabhu Ram, head of industry intelligence at market analysis firm Cybermedia Research.
“While the iPhone is the most obvious entry point for companies into the Apple ecosystem, a vast majority of them go on to then buy an AirPod, then perhaps an Apple Watch and, subsequently, also subscribe to Apple’s closely integrated subscription services,” Ram said. “In the long run is when they convert to buying a Mac or an iPad—creating a long trail of sales that is quite unlike most other tech brands in India right now.”
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Navkendar Singh, associate vice-president at IDC India, agrees with the growth story but points out a caveat as well. “There is of course plenty of growth room for Apple in India right now, but there will undoubtedly be a glass ceiling that the company will hit at some point since we’re not seeing many organically new buyers joining the smartphone world,” Singh said. “We’re seeing the smartphone space go through a K-shaped recovery curve, which means that in many segments, there’s simply no demand.”
Number of phones
Meanwhile, a consensus of three analysts—Ram of Cybermedia, Singh of IDC, and Counterpoint’s Pathak—projected that by the end of 2025, Apple could sell over 15 million iPhones this year, raking up 8% or more in terms of its volume-wise market share.
According to these analysts, such a feat would help Apple break into India’s list of top five smartphone brands by volume for the first time—currently it is at No. 6, with Chinese smartphone maker Vivo at the top of the pecking order, data from IDC showed.
This would be a herculean feat for Apple in one of the world’s most price-sensitive markets, since the tech giant sells its devices at least three times higher priced than the market’s average pricing. According to analyst estimates, Apple sold 9.5 million iPhones in 2023, followed by 12.5 million units last year.
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Then, there is the aspect of its market reputation, coupled with an increasing base of premium smartphones in the country. Pathak said India is on track to cross a net active base of 120 million ‘premium’ smartphones—devices priced above ₹50,000—by 2028. “What we see here is that Apple alone accounts for nearly half of this premium market, which gives it a large market to continue to cater to,” Pathak added.
What India should do
However, while rising sales is good news, experts warn that India should cash in on this opportunity—or risk remaining a low-value nation in the long run for Apple and the overall electronics industry alike.
IDC’s Singh said substituting China from the electronics supply chain might be difficult but isn’t impossible. “That’s where India sees an opportunity to become both a bigger market for Apple, and also earn more by increasing the local value addition from iPhone sales,” he said.
The last bit, though, is yet to play out. While electronics manufacturers in India are set to increasingly make components locally—including battery cells, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and device moulds—such components are a part of the low-value items in the net cost of manufacturing an iPhone.
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“The most expensive parts of the iPhone, which are localized in China and Taiwan, are the semiconductor chips and the ‘OLED’ displays. Until these are localized, India will continue to remain the cost arbitrage-driven large-volume assembler for Apple—akin to what China was for the company over a decade ago,” Singh added.
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