Apple has now moved a total of $7B worth of iPhone production out of China and into India, according to an unnamed government official cited in a new report.
The same official says that Apple plans to hit $40B within the next five years, as the company accelerates plans to reduce its dependence on China …
Background
The need for Apple to lessen its dependence on China as a manufacturing center has been clear for many years, but the impact of the pandemic at the world’s biggest iPhone assembly plant really underlined the problem. The COVID-19-related disruption was estimated to have cost the company a billion dollars per week.
India is seen as Apple’s main hope when it comes to relocating production outside of China. A report last year suggested that a quarter of all iPhones could be made in India by 2025, and a later one indicated that this could rise to half of all iPhones by 2027.
We learned earlier this year that Apple’s primary iPhone assembler, Foxconn, has begun construction of two new iPhone plants in India, and that new government incentives mean that iPad production is also expected to begin there soon.
$7B worth of iPhone production in India
BQ Prime (formerly Bloomberg Quint) reports.
iPhone maker Apple has plans to scale up production in India by over five-fold to around $40 billion, or about Rs 3.32 lakh crore, in the next four to five years, according to government sources. According to the official, who did not wish to be named, the company has crossed the $7 billion production mark in the last financial year.
In the same financial year, Apple’s total iPhone output was worth $191B, making India a very small proportion of total output currently. However, there has been consistent reporting of the Cupertino company seeking to dramatically ramp up Indian iPhone output as tensions with China remain high.
These latest numbers are still significantly lower than earlier estimates.
A big change this year
Apple last year began iPhone 14 production in India within weeks of launch, and this year succeeded in simultaneous iPhone 15 launch production.
For the first time, Apple will sell new– made-in-India iPhone models on launch day (via Bloomberg). That means the iPhone 15 you buy on September 22 could have been manufactured in India, a sign that Apple’s worldwide supply chain infrastructure is taking significant steps to expand beyond China.
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