Apple has lost three main executives in India — Rahul Puri, Jayant Gupta and Manish Sharma — as the US devices major struggles to enhance iPhone sales in the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone market, Bloomberg reported.
Apple has a market share of about 2 percent in India by selling 3.2 million iPhones in 2017, according to Counterpoint Research, In the first half of 2018, fewer than a million devices moved, it estimates.
The below chart prepared by market research agency IDC indicates the global smartphone market share of Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo.
Apple India’s national sales and distribution chief, the head of its commercial channels and mid-market business, and the head of telecom carrier sales have resigned. Apple’s Indian sales team is now undergoing a restructuring.
The executive exodus is a symptom of Apple’s persistent malaise in India, where high tariffs inflate the price tags of imported gadgets such as the iPhone and consumers gravitate toward cheaper alternatives from Xiaomi and Samsung Electronics, the report said on Sunday.
Instead, Apple, the second largest smartphone maker in the world, resorts to marketing iPhones that are a few generations old and doesn’t manufacture its latest iPhone models domestically, thereby incurring import levies.
“iPhone India sales were weak in the first half of 2018 and, even if they show a big jump in the traditionally strong second half, Apple will still fall short of last year,” said Neil Shah, a research director with Counterpoint.
Xiaomi is the market leader in India. Samsung has lost its dominant position to Xiaomi due to lack of innovative features available in its latest smartphones.
