Bangalore: Apple rejoiced after its sales grew 400 percent in India, which made CEO Tim Cook to acknowledge that the country is turning into an important market for the company. The acknowledgement was in contrast with Cook’s earlier statement that he loved India, but felt business opportunities were much more elsewhere, reports Economic Times.

Cook while announcing the company’s second quarter result said, "From an iPhone point of view, we saw very strong sales in several of the emerging markets, sort of pre-pay markets. India was up over 400 percent; Turkey and Poland were both up over 60 percent. The Philippines was up about 140 percent."

The company also saw strong phone sales in the matured markets; it grew over 50 percent in the US, over 60 percent in Japan and about 50 percent in the UK. "So we had several regions where phone sales actually accelerated from the previous quarter," Cook said.

He also acknowledge that another popular Apple product, iPad, too reported double-digit growth in sales by unit in China, Japan, Canada, Latin America, Russia, the Middle East and India.

Apple’s Senior V-P and CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, said that there’s 20 percent year-on-year jump in iPhone sales to 31.2 million units, and he attributed it to emerging markets like India. "iPhone sales were ahead of our expectations and we were particularly pleased with very strong year-over-year growth in iPhone sales in markets like the US, UK, Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, Taiwan and Singapore," he said. 

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