Macs give Apple a bigger bite of India pie

But what surprised was the new sales record set for the June quarter by its Mac laptops and desktops, which have played a smaller role in the company’s increasing influence on India’s gadget-buying preferences.

Estimates from experts polled by Mint indicate that Apple's India revenues from the Mac portfolio grew 67% year-on-year (y-o-y) in the April-June quarter, and the number of units sold increased 33%. Plus, share of India revenue in global Mac sales rose to 3% in Q1 of FY25, from 1.8% in Q1 of FY24.

Industry stakeholders pegged Apple’s growth in Mac sales to increasing enterprise demand—a factor that could help the company ramp up sales of its laptops and desktops in India over the next two years, if not more.

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To be sure, iPhones still account for 85-90% of Apple’s India revenue, with its net annual revenue expected to have grown around 30% in FY24. Analysts expect FY25 to also be a year of double-digit revenue growth for Apple.

Chief executive Tim Cook underlined this trend at Thursday’s earnings call, stating that India was yet again in Apple’s list of record quarterly revenue—amid a 5% annual growth in net revenue to $85.8 billion.

Rise of the Mac

In Apple’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday, Luca Maestri, the company's senior vice-president and chief financial officer, said, “Mac generated $7 billion in revenue, up 2% year-over-year, driven by the MacBook Air powered by the M3 chip. We saw particularly strong performance in our emerging markets, with June quarter records for Mac in Latin America, India, and South Asia."

A poll of three sell-side analysts by Mint pegged Apple to have sold around 150,000-160,000 units of Mac devices in India between April and June this year. At an average selling price (ASP) of ₹110,000 ($1,300), Apple is estimated to have earned around $210 million from Mac sales during this period.

In comparison, Mint research noted that a total of 2.3 million units of laptops and desktops were sold in India from all brands during this period at an ASP of ₹45,000 ($540)—thus generating $1.24 billion in net market revenue for the June quarter.

Thus, even with a market share of around 6.5% by volume, Apple accounted for nearly 17% of the revenue earned by brands in the laptop market. That's probably not surprising, considering Apple laptops usually are priced higher than rivals offerings.

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In comparison, HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo, which were the top four brands for laptops and desktops in India by volume as per a 16 May report on the sector by market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC) India, accounted for 78% of all PCs sold in the country.

By revenue, HP is estimated to have earned $500 million in the June quarter, while the other three earned $250-290 million each, according to Mint research polled from analysts. This leaves Apple as the fifth highest-grossing PC brand in India, and sixth by volume.

The enterprise connection

A key factor behind this growth has been Apple’s enterprise deals, analysts said. Ashweej Aithal, research analyst at market researcher Canalys, said that the key contributor in this regard was Apple’s increasing outreach to small and medium businesses (SMBs) and other enterprises.

“There’s a surge in enterprise purchases of Macs. The migration from Windows to Mac is higher than before today, and Apple’s channel partners are pushing for enterprise contracts more than ever before," Aithal said, adding that the growth is slower among consumers and there's more room for growth on the enterprise side in the coming year.

A key example of such a deal was disclosed by Apple on 10 July with homegrown IT services firm, Zoho Corp. In a blog post, Apple stated that 65% of Zoho, which employs approximately 16,000 people, have chosen an Apple product for work. Apple also claimed that it garners “50% fewer support requests for Mac than for PC".

While Apple did not disclose a figure for its contract with Zoho, Mint's research pegged the approximate value of its contract at around $10-15 million, or about 5-7% of its quarterly revenue from Macs in India.

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This, industry executives state, is just the start. Bharath Shenoy, senior market analyst at IDC India, said that Apple’s enterprise push is still at its nascent stage.

“The first three months of the year saw timid enterprise spending in IT contracts due to continued macroeconomic uncertainties," said Shenoy, adding that many decisions were also postponed due to India’s general assembly elections.

“The upcoming two quarters will thus see a clear ramp-up in enterprise demand for IT contracts—a factor that could really benefit Apple in terms of its domestic revenue from Macs," Shenoy said.

Aithal of Canalys further added that the recent Crowdstrike-Microsoft outage has accelerated queries from enterprises. “There is a lot of interest in Macs from the security standpoint from enterprises. AI is also another factor, which Apple seems to be cashing in on," Aithal said.