Coinciding with the supposed restructuring of Apple India’s sales team, three of its senior executives are said to have exited the company in recent weeks, a report from Bloomberg said. The three executives include Rahul Puri, head of national sales and distribution, Jayant Gupta, head of operator business and iPhone sales, and Manish Sharma who was the national sales head of telecom, reports said. Furthermore, considering that more exits -- especially from the ‘mid-level’-- are on the cards, Apple will likely have a completely new team to handle sales in India, the ET report said quoting sources in the company. The move is seen as a result of the change in Apple’s strategy, brought in by the company’s new head of India operations Michel Coulomb, to boost its struggling sales in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. According to the Bloomberg report that cites Counterpoint research, the company accounts for 2% market share in India and has managed to sell about 3.2 million iPhones in 2017. The sales dropped further in 2018, the report added. Even if Apple manages to achieve a strong second half in 2018, it is unlikely to top the sales of the previous year, Counterpoint research director Neil Shah told Bloomberg. A shift in strategy ET reported that Apple’s top brass in Cupertino was unhappy given that the company’s market share in India remained stagnant at 2-3% over the last five years under the previous head Sanjay Kaul, who had been pushing sales through discounting and rapid expansion. Reports also claimed…
