Apple reigns in India market among global big tech cos

Apple outperformed global tech giants in India for FY25, achieving highest revenue and profit despite economic challenges.

Apple India reigned in the India market amongst big tech giants in fiscal year 2025, reporting highest revenue and profit despite macroeconomic and tariff pressures, topping India’s units of Microsoft, Google and Facebook, as per Tofler data.

Microsoft and Google were runner-ups in revenue and profit growth respectively, while Facebook India showed muted performance in terms of absolute numbers. 

However, when considering on-year growth, Microsoft and Facebook showed better growth of 20-30 per cent. Microsoft’s profit grew 38 per cent in India.

On the other end, Google’s performance was sluggish with revenue actually declining 3.2 per cent.

When asked about the differentiated performance among the companies despite common macroeconomic headwinds, one analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, attributed Apple’s performance to the rapid growth for devices in India. 

Important segment

People switched to higher-end devices in FY25 while the ad market – an important segment for Google – was under pressure. It’s cloud segment also faces formidable competition from Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS services.

Greyhound Research pointed out that when macro pressure shows up, Apple is insulated in three ways: localisation as a margin stabiliser, demand composition and the ecosystem and services layer.

“Tariffs matter less when more of the device value chain is already inside the country. Apple’s India trajectory is increasingly premium and upper mid. In a year where the mass market becomes cautious, the premium segment does not collapse in the same way,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst at Greyhound Research.

Services revenue is higher margin and more recurring, keeping the engine going even when hardware growth normalises. That is why Apple can maintain profit leadership even when the market keeps shouting about tariffs and macro uncertainty, he said.

On the other hand, Microsoft grew because it sits inside protected spend. Microsoft already serves as the default operating layer for many enterprises. So, a CIO will still renew services to avoid switching cost and operational risk in a volatile year.

Revenue growth

“That is why you see both revenue growth and profit leverage. Profit growth tells you this was not just selling more, it was selling deeper and operating more efficiently on top of committed consumption,” said Gogia, adding that Microsoft is also treating India as an infrastructure and data residency market, not just a sales market.

Regarding advertising, Meta’s India entity can show a certain revenue number even while the gross ad value on the platform is dramatically larger, owing to a huge slice going to the parent company as royalties and fees. This makes reported revenue look small relative to the platform’s economic footprint.

“Meta still grew strongly in FY25, which tells you demand returned, but it also tells you the cost allocation model is heavy and will continue to shape how profits look,” said Gogia.

As for Google, Greyhound Research said the FY25 slowdown serves as a warning that Google’s India model is carrying rising structural costs and facing share pressure in high-growth ad formats and still has work to do to become the default enterprise partner like Microsoft. If Google tightens execution, improves commercial clarity and builds deeper enterprise confidence, its India market can re-accelerate.

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