As per the latest data by the International Data Corporation, South Korean giant Samsung holds the largest market share across the globe, while iPhone-maker Apple has the highest premium price point. So while Apple's highly anticipated store launch in India —scheduled for Tuesday, April 18, in Mumbai and Thursday, April 20, in New Delhi — is grabbing all the eyeballs, CNBC-TV18 decodes the global smartphone market.

Twenty-five years after being in India and with 500 stores across 25 countries in the world, Apple finally has come to India. Ahead of the launch of Apple's first flagship store in India, in Mumbai, let us take a look at some interesting and exciting data revolving around smartphones across the world. As mentioned earlier, Samsung is currently leading the worldwide smartphone market share with 21.6 percent, followed closely by Apple at around 18.8 percent.

If you look at average selling price, iPhone sells at nearly $800 which is over three times Samsung's average selling price of $254 — understandable, as Apple makes four iPhones a year currently, while Samsung has a wider smartphone portfolio. So if you club these numbers with the volume numbers, Apple's global market share in terms of value is over 50 percent. In fact 50 percent is a mark that it crossed for the first time in the last quarter itself.

Moving on to India - Xiaomi, Samsung, vivo, realme, OPPO are the brands that dominate the market as India is still value-sensitive. The way to look at India is through multiple segments — three to be precise: $500 and above, $300-500 and below $300. It is the $500 market which grew at 55 percent last year and the sub-300 market declined by 15 percent.

This reinforces the K shaped thesis of all economists. It is in the premium segment ($500 and above) where Apple has a staggering market share of 60 percent and its distant cousin is Samsung at 21 percent. In fact, all of last year, iPhone 13 was the third most-shipped device — roughly 6.5 million iPhones were shipped last year in India.

For Apple, which is still dominated by strong contribution coming in from US, EU and China, India isn't even amongst the top 7 markets for the company, infact India accounts for about 1.5 percent of Apple's overall sales. However Tim Cook has pointed about the potential in India in their previous earnings call as well.

Last year Apple's revenue in India grew by over 50 percent. In 2022, 50 million 5G phones were shipped to the Indian market with an average selling price of $395. IDC does believe that these 5G devices could be roughly 60 percent of their overall shipments in 2023.

Coming to Apple BKC, reports suggest that the company is paying Rs 42 lakh per month plus 2 percent of their monthly sales as rent — which escalates by 15 percent every three years and 0.5 percent increase of their monthly sales share as well.

Globally Apple does about $6,000-6,500 per square feet as sales, assuming one third of that in India as it is a value sensitive market, Apple BKC alone could do Rs 300 crore in annual sales.

India presents a prime opportunity for Apple to make a big dent — the country saw shipments of 50 million 5G devices in 2022, with the average selling point of #395 per device.

In 2023 alone, 5G devices — accelerated by the rollout and adoption of 5G services across the country — accounted for 60 percent of all smartphone shipments, and we are only in the fourth month of the year.

With the cheapest current iPhone — the SE second generation — retailing for around Rs 45,000, Apple could very well be looking to streamline its India strategy as the country is one of the — if not the — biggest smartphone markets globally.

First Published:Apr 17, 2023 5:38 PM IST