2018-11-05
An industry research firm predicted that iPhone sales in India would fall to a quarter in the fourth quarter of this year.
 
This development puts Apple on the road to the first drop in the iPhone in a year for four years, said Quarterpoint.
 
The focus has been on Apple's difficulty in reaching the 1.3 billion-strong Indian market last week after Apple blamed a number of large emerging markets.
 
Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, said after the release of third-quarter results that there was no change in sales in India in the fourth quarter, which includes a month-long celebration season, culminating this week in Diwali, a boom in electronics sales.
 
Neil Shah, research director at Hong Kong-based Quarterpoint Research, said on Saturday that the company's channels had indicated that numbers in the quarter were between 700,000 and 800,000 units, down from 1 million units a year earlier.
 
For the whole of 2018, Apple is expected to sell about 2 million phones, down about 1 million from last year, as Indian consumers are unwilling to pay high prices for phone purchases, which resulted from tariffs and the rupiah's decline, he said.
 
"Sales are expected to fall for the first time in four years," Shah said, "If you look at the third quarter, it was 900,000 units last year, and this year, about 450,000 units."
 
"IPhone has become more expensive, its characteristics and specifications are not so attractive