Apple doubles iPhone assembly in India in shift away from China

Apple assembled $14 billion of iPhones in India last fiscal year, doubling production in a sign it’s finally making a concerted push to diversify beyond China.
Sankalp Phartiyal for Bloomberg News:
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The US tech giant now makes as much as 14% or about 1 in 7 of its marquee devices from India, people familiar with the matter said, declining to be named as the information isn’t public.
The ramp-up suggests Apple is accelerating efforts to cut its longstanding reliance on China as geopolitical tensions mount. The country remains its largest iPhone-making hub and biggest overseas market. But that’s also where Apple’s revenues are plunging, hit by ascendant rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co. and an expanding ban on the use of foreign technology in the workplace.
Foxconn Technology Group assembled nearly 67% and Pegatron Corp. about 17% of the India-made iPhones in the fiscal year ended March 2024, according to the people. The remaining iPhones were made in Wistron Corp.’s plant in southern Karnataka state, which the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group took over last year. Tata plans to build one of the country’s biggest iPhone assembly plants.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been careful to cultivate his relationship with Chinese Communist Party leaders, given the sensitivities of the company’s geographic diversification. He visited China last month to meet with the country’s commerce minister and open a new store in Shanghai.
Its longer-term shift away from China marks a gradual pivot from a years-long model that helped propel the iPhone to the industry’s forefront. It also coincides with a strategic rethink, as the company that revolutionized the smartphone sector searches for its next big hit.

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MacDailyNews Take: That 14% should be closer to 41% by now, but better late than never!
China is critical for Apple in every way from sales to product assembly, so Apple continues to kowtow to China. With Apple’s strong stance – in other places of the world – on users’ rights and privacy, it’s a bad look for the company and a tough tightrope that Tim Cook is trying to walk. — MacDailyNews, July 29, 2017
Apple should work to diversify production so as to not be beholden and utterly dependent upon a single country led by autocratic fools… – MacDailyNews, April 27, 2022
See also:
• Tim Cook firmly latched Apple onto China’s CCP teat. What’s his plan for weaning it off? – November 2, 2022
• The clock has struck midnight in China for Apple – December 6, 2022
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