Apple iPhones Are Expensive, But 'Middle Class Driving Sales' In India: Tim Cook

To a separate query on iPhone purchases by the middle class in emerging markets, he said: “…And so as I look at that, without having market research data on the demographics that you are asking, it is clear to me that it has to come from the middle class.

“Because the upper income earners, there’s only so many of those. And you cannot grow those kind of numbers without getting significantly into the middle class.

“I hope we’re also beyond the middle class, but I don’t have the data to suggest that that’s the case or not the case.”

Cook said iPhone shipments have picked up significantly in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

“If you look in the emerging markets, our revenues were up 58 per cent year on year. And this accounted for just slightly less than 40 per cent of the company’s revenue. If you look at BRIC within the emerging markets, BRIC countries were up 64 per cent year over year,” he added.

In the first six months of 2015 fiscal, Apple sold over 135 million iPhones, 34 million iPads and 10 million Macs.

Its revenue grew 28 per cent to more than USD 132 billion and net income rose by 36 per cent to over USD 31 billion as compared to the six months ended March 29, 2014.
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