New Delhi: In India, people can now obtain Apple’s latest iPhone virtually as fast as they can obtain a pizza. Many people had to skip the store and days-long wait when the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max launched in the country on Friday. All they did was open one of the apps that deliver phone phones quickly and they had their new phone at their door in about 10 minutes.
The new iPhones were available from apps that typically deliver groceries quickly like Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy’s Instamart and BigBasket as soon as they were introduced. However, of course, buyers might be able to purchase the phone the same way, via Apple stores, other authorized stores, and online stores.
It’s not the first time when super-fast delivery apps have sold new iPhones at the launch day in India. This market is expanding at a rapid rate, though. By the first half of 2026, India’s fast delivery business had reached $9 billion and those using these apps had increased from 8 to over 60 million people per month in just three years. That market is expected to value $50 billion by 2030, experts estimate.
There was a high demand on the launch day. The company BigBasket reported that it shipped over 300 of the new iPhones within mere 1st hour. Instamart shared that the top cities for the highest number of orders were Bengaluru followed by Delhi and the most popular model was the Burgundy (256GB) iPhone 18 Pro. However, the phones were still available for delivery in some geographies while at the same time stocks were depleted in other geographies.
This is despite the fact that the number of phones sold through fast delivery apps remains small but experts believe it could turn out to be a way to sell expensive handsets in big Indian cities. This is an early indicator of whether or not the concept can work, but the real question is whether consumers will continue to purchase mobile devices in this manner after the initial buzz subsides, analyst Tarun Pathak said.
Another expert Navkendar Singh said Indian shoppers already purchase items through these apps and come in handy for all their shopping needs, so they are comfortable with purchasing expensive items as well. He noted that people like this option do so because “they receive their phone right away and they won’t wait in line or for days to get it. However, he said that the ability to deliver goods quickly is not yet a significant factor in the sale of phones at the moment it is primarily service as an attention-grabber to new releases.
