Apple reports 16% revenue growth in Q2 2018, eyeing retail stores in India

Apple posted a 16% revenue growth year-on-year to $61.1 billion in Q2 2018 in latest financial results – “our best end-to-March quarter ever”, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

It was the sixth consecutive quarter for Apple to record growth in revenue.

Profit was up 25% YoY to $13.8 billion.

Such figures not only proved the cynics wrong but have bolstered the brand’s image and perception with financial markets.

The three main drivers of the growth were iPhone, services and wearables.

iPhone sales in this quarter hit 52.2 million units or $37.9 billion with the iPhone X model the most popular.

These were, slightly up from 50.8 million units in fiscal Q2 2017 but not the growth that Wall Street was expecting.

Cook rejects the popular view that global smartphone growth is plateauing

He states: “I don’t buy the view that the market is saturated.

“I don’t see that from a market point of view and certainly not from an iPhone point of view.”

Analysts say that its strong iPhone sales allows Apple to keep its HomePod [smart speaker] business humming while the industry awaits augmented and virtual reality to take another 3 to 5 years to provide growth.

Apple’s revenue from services hit all-time high to $9.19 billion, an impressive 31% leap from $7.04 billion in the year-ago quarter.

It includes Apple Store, Apple Music, iCloud and Apple Pay

The quarter was also the period when Apple Music’s subscriber numbers hit 40 million.

Wearables including its Watch and AirPods earphones, had 50% expansion in sales and revenue over last year’s quarter.

Cook did not specify figures for the wearable division but said it is “now the size of a Fortune 300 company”— which puts it to around $9–$10 billion.

International sales accounted for 65% of the quarter’s revenue,.

Cook cited the biggest growth in Japan (22%), China (21%) and America (17%) and Europe (9%).

The least revenue growth in fiscal Q2 2018 was once again the Asia-Pacific region (4%), which includes Australia.

Buoyed by Asian growth, Cook reveals that India is the next market for the tech giant to set up retail stores in.

“Our objective over time is to go in there [India] with all of our different initiatives from retail and everything else,” he says.

Cook admits that while Apple’s market share in India is very low, it had the best results there in the second quarter.

Indian rules stipulate that stores which set up have to source 30% of their material locally.

This has kept maker of iPhones from launching its outlets in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, ,

Last year Apple struck a partnership with India’s Wistron Corp., to assemble its budget SE models in Bengaluru.

Apple is working with carriers that are investing in creating LTE networks.

“There are obviously huge opportunities there for us and we have an extremely low share in that market overall and so we’re putting a lot of energy there,” Cook confirms.