Apple focussing on India to tap huge opportunities: CEO Tim Cook

Apple is bullish on India and plans to launch all its initiatives, including retail, in the country where it has an "extremely low" overall market share, the tech giant's CEO Tim Cook has said.

India, the third largest smartphone market in the world, has huge opportunities for Apple, Cook said.

"We have extremely low share in that market overall," Cook said during Apple's second quarter 2018 earnings call yesterday when the tech giant posted quarterly revenue of USD 61.1 billion, an increase of 16 per cent from the year-ago quarter.

"We're thrilled to report our best March quarter ever, with strong revenue growth in iPhone, Services and Wearables," said Cook.

International sales accounted for 65 per cent of the quarter's revenue for the Cupertino, California-based company.

Cook said Apple was "putting a lot of energy" in India and working with the carriers in the market, and "they're investing enormously on the LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks."
He noted that the infrastructure in India has come "quite a ways" since Apple began to put a lot of energy in the Indian market "because of their leadership and so forth."
Apple has almost two million application developers in China that are writing apps for iOS and the App Store, and "they're doing unbelievably creative work and innovative work. So we look at China holistically, not only as a market."