Apple iPhone sales may drop further in India according to reports

Apple opened pre-orders for the latest flagship devices iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus on Flipkart at midnight today. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple **visited India back in May** to talk about the importance of Indian market, **discuss 'Make in India' with PM Modi** and trying to push refurbished iPhones to the market. This was the first time that the Apple CEO was visiting India and it was partly a knee-jerk reaction to the **company reporting a drop** in year-pm-year profits and iPhone sales for the first time since 2003. Despite bold statements about importance of Indian market, **possibility of cheaper iPhones** and presence of Apple in India **for the next thousand years** , the company failed to launch the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at the same time as USA, in the first phase of iPhone avalibility. Instead, Indian consumers will have to wait for almost one month to get their hands on the smartphones. Even though the company is set to open technology development centre and Maps centre in Hyderabad. The buzz around launch of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus was comparitively **much lower than the last year** according to analysts and they further reported that the latest iPhones are nothing revolutionary or **game changer in any way** . Even though strong preorders for iPhone 7 has **pushed Apple stock to their highest point** in 2016. However, despite joining forces with **Flipkart to provide the Apple iPhone**  and other Apple products in addition to the preorders for the launch 7 October 2016, things don’t look great for the company. According to a report by Business Standard, it is speculated that iPhone sales may drop further in the country. According to the latest data by GFK, Apple’s share by value stands at 6.3 percentage. This is less than Oppo and slightly above Lyf mobiles. The report points out at Samsung to be the top smartphone leader with 47 percent market share. Sales volume through out India is also dropping with the iPhone losing market share to other brands in the main cities. According to International Data Corp, the shares have halved from 4.6 percent to 2.5 percent in top 30 Indian cities in April-June 2016. The market performance in above Rs 20,000 segment has worsened by falling to 35.6 percentage from 52.3 percentage in January-March 2016. However, even though the analysts claim that the falling iPhone shares in the first half is a noted trend, but, this time the change was different. The market share has been captured by the sudden emergence of Chinese brands like Oppo and Vivo according to the report.