Winning Bizness Desk
Mumbai. India is now on its way to becoming the world's largest iPhone maker as American smartphone giant Apple is looking to diversify production units outside China. According to industry insiders, India is likely to be the largest contributor to locally manufactured iPhones. Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron are getting the benefit of the government's PLI scheme related to the production of Rs 41,000 crore, due to which the manufacturing of iPhone in India is set to increase rapidly. Amidst the geopolitical tension between China and America, Apple is slowly transferring a large part of iPhone manufacturing to India. According to experts, due to the Kovid lockdown in China, there have been many problems in production, due to which the company has accelerated its plan to shift manufacturing.
Zhengzhou is the largest manufacturing unit
Foxconn's plant in Zhengzhou, China is the largest manufacturing unit for iPhone in the world. Last month, noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had said in a tweet that Foxconn would be expanding the capacity of its India plant. Because of which iPhones made by Foxconn in India will grow at a rate of at least 150 percent in 2023 and within a few years 40-45 percent of iPhones are to be shipped from India (compared to the current 2-4 percent).
Production in China diminishing
Apple produced smartphones worth $205 billion in its fiscal year ending September 2022. According to Counterpoint Research, the contribution of mainland China is gradually decreasing from around 91.2-93.5 per cent of global shipments in 2022, 95.8 per cent in 2021 and 98.2 per cent in 2020. China remains the second largest market for the iPhone after the US. A few years ago, when the US-China tension was at its peak and companies including Apple were looking for alternatives to China, India started its PLI scheme. Three large Apple contract manufacturers successfully applied for incentives under this scheme. Since then India has been manufacturing Apple's goods. Foxconn's factory in Tamil Nadu started manufacturing the iPhone 14 within ten days of the global launch. Pegatron is also manufacturing the latest devices at its plant in Tamil Nadu.
IPhone making several models in India
Currently, Apple is manufacturing iPhone SE, iPhone 12, iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 (Basic) models in India. However, all the Pro models sold in the country are imported. Navkendar Singh, Associate Vice President, IDC India, said that it is now highly likely that Apple will start assembling the Pro model in India, of which 85 per cent is currently being made in China. The reason Apple was not doing this was because there was not much local demand for the Pro model in the previous iPhone range.
