In a big shift from its current Chinese suppliers, Apple is likely to move 50 per cent of its iPhone production to India by 2027, says a report by South China Morning Post. The tech giant has been trying to cut dependency on its contract manufacturers in China, citing falling demand.
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India is currently Apple’s second-biggest production centre globally after China. Recently, JP Morgan analysts were quoted as saying in a report by news agency Reuters that Apple wants to move 25 per cent of global iPhone production to India by 2025.
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“The iPhone 14’s mass production schedule in India is still about six weeks behind China, but the gap has improved significantly,” according to famed Apple Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Of TF International Securities.
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“Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that India and China will be able to produce the iPhone 15 at the same time next year.”
Earlier this week, a report by news agency Bloomberg said Apple will expand its production capacity outside China in the wake of the tense geopolitical situation and uncertainty. Apple’s biggest contract manufacturer and partner, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp. have included Southeast Asia in their expansion plans for this year.
“We will continue to grow our scale in mainland China, the Americas and Southeast Asia, and these efforts will blossom in 2023,” Young Liu, Chairperson of Foxconn’s flagship unit Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., was quoted as saying by Bloomberg, at a company event on Sunday.
To recall, the production of iPhones was recently disrupted at Foxconn’s manufacturing facility in Zhengzhou, Apple’s largest contract manufacturer, due to workers’ unrest in the wake of the strict Covid-19 restrictions in China. The disruption at Foxconn’s biggest iPhone manufacturing factory cost Apple as many as 6 million iPhone Pro models, reports said.
The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max were the most in-demand handsets last year, offsetting slumping sales for the vanilla iPhone 14 editions.
