According to Le Xuan Chiew, a research manager at Omdia, the April numbers show the aggressive measures Apple has taken to adapt to Washington's tariffs against China, where Apple manufactures most of its iPhones.
"This latest trade war with China, is the type of disturbance that Apple has long been trying to prepare itself for," he said, adding that the country had first started investing heavily into supply chains in India during the Covid-19 pandemic.
India also surpassed China in iPhone shipments to the United States in March, according to Omdia's estimates. The uptick came ahead of Trump's first iteration of "reciprocal tariffs" on April 2. The amount of shipments that month was unusually high and appeared to be the result of the company's stockpiling, according to Chiew.