Apple Drums Up Emerging Market Focus On Earnings Call; Gurman Weighs In On One Strategy That Could Help Cupertino Win Big In This Frontier

Apple, Inc. AAPL reported last week results for its fiscal year second quarter that beat forecasts. One message that stood out during the company management’s earnings call was an emphasis on "emerging markets."

What Happened: While Apple CEO Tim Cook's focus on emerging markets wasn't surprising, the number of times the topic was mentioned during the call was higher than expected, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman said in his weekly “Power On” newsletter.

India alone was mentioned about 20 times on the call, Gurman noted.

The iPhone’s resurgence during the quarter was fueled by emerging markets across South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, Gurman said, citing Apple CFO Luca Maestri.

In Apple's more established markets, however, sales fell in the Americas, Japan and China, contributing to an overall revenue decline of about 3%, the columnist said.

"The message from Apple is that there's still plenty of room to expand in these newer markets and add customers to its platform," Gurman said. He noted that Maestri had mentioned during the call that, in regions where Apple's market share is low, the company tends to add a lot of new customers to its ecosystem.

Gurman also pointed out that Cook had said that India is at a "tipping point," where a lot of people are entering the middle class and could be convinced to buy iPhones.

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Super Cheap iPhones Not On Radar: The Apple CEO's comments on India suggests that the company is waiting for Indian consumers to purchase Apple products at standard prices, Gurman said. He added that Apple may not necessarily make super-cheap iPhones in order to penetrate the Indian market.

In making his case, Gurman mentioned that two new Apple locations in India are upscale stores, with the same premium-priced products and services seen in other countries.

Apple has avoided bringing down the price of its products because it believes that doing so could hurt its brand and profit margins, Gurman said. "But selling cheaper devices could get more people to buy Apple services, one of the company's few categories that grew last quarter," he added.

While Apple might not ever release a new iPhone under $300, it could market its older SE models as cheaper alternatives, Gurman said.

Apple closed Friday’s session up 4.69% at $173.57, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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