The post Apple’s Iphone Sales Have Dropped 35% in India, Here’s Why appeared first on iDrop News written by Jonathan Lee.

Apple has continued to struggle to establish a foothold in India, which is currently the world’s third largest smartphone market after China and the United States. A new study by Strategy Analytics found that iPhone sales in the country had plummeted drastically by 35% since last year, down to 800,000 shipments compared to 1.2 million in 2015. Apple’s marketshare in India has halved from 4% to just 2% in the span of one year.

This is in spite of the fact that India’s smartphone market has continued to expand at a healthy clip, growing 19% annually, reaching 31 million units in the second quarter of this fiscal year, according to Strategy Analytics.

Android smartphones performed admirably on the other hand, cornering 97% of the market and selling over 6 million more devices compared to last year. According to The Verge, Indians are expected to purchase some 139 million smartphones this year, with the vast majority of them opting to buy cheaper Android phones. All of this does not bode well for Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook admitted that iPhones were too expensive in India, MacRumors reports.

The prohibitively high price tags of iPhones suggest that Apple will have to slash prices significantly if it wants to regain the ground it has lost. Another issue the Silicon Valley company will have to contend with, is its relatively low retail presence in India, which has strict rules on foreign direct investment.

Fortunately for foreign companies, these rules are set to be relaxed, paving the way for Apple to significantly enlarge its retail presence and open more of its iconic stores in India.

The post Apple’s iPhone Sales Have Dropped 35% in India, Here’s Why appeared first on iDrop News written by Jonathan Lee.