Apple’s decision of bringing four different iPhone 12 models has clearly worked. We won’t be going much into which model became the most successful amongst the four, but we will be peeking at the total sales that iPhone 12 series garnered for the company. The Cupertino tech giant witnessed a 22% growth in the iPhone shipments in the holiday quarter of 2020. This feat helped Apple become the largest smartphone seller globally. As per a research firm IDC, Apple shipped over 90.1 million iPhone units in the last quarter of 2020. It is worth noting that this is the highest number of iPhones Apple has ever shipped in a single quarter — more details on the story ahead.
Apple’s Revenues Crossed $100 Billion For the First Time in a Single Quarter
With a record number of iPhone shipments in a single quarter, what followed with the revenue was not surprising at all. Apple amassed over a record $111.4 billion which is 21% higher year-on-year basis.
What’s interesting is that 64% of the quarter’s revenue came from international markets. iPhone 12 series was one of the biggest contributing factors in the record quarterly sales for the company. As per a report from Counterpoint Research, iPhone 12 had become the best selling 5G smartphone globally just after 14 days (two weeks) from its launch.
Focusing on India, Tim Cook said that Apple had doubled its business in the country compared to the last quarter of 2019. Adding to this, Apple saw a 57% rise in iPhone sales in China with iPhone 12 5G leading the way.
What Did Apple do Good?
First of all, it is noteworthy that the iPhone 12 series launched much later than it was supposed to. This created high-anticipation and excitement for the series in the market. With the inclusion of ‘5G’, Apple made its smartphone future-proof, meaning users were less reluctant to spend or rather invest huge sums of money on an iPhone.
Then, Apple opened its first retail store in India called, ‘Apple India Store’ in September 2020. Tim Cook said that the online store helped Apple a lot in increasing its sales in the last quarter. Apple also has plans to start manufacturing the iPhone 12 series in India. Further, the tech giant has plans for opening offline retail stores in the country very soon.
With these record sales, Apple took the first position from Samsung in being the biggest smartphone maker in the world.
It is important not to ignore the new iPad Air 2020 and MacBooks with M1 chipset, which contributed a lot to the company's global sales.
