Benzinga -
- Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) assembled over $7 billion of iPhones in India last fiscal, tripling production after expanding its presence beyond China.
- India now produces 7% of Apple's iPhones through expanding partners from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (OTC: HNHPF) Foxconn Technology Group to Pegatron Corp, Bloomberg reports.
- India accounted for 1% of iPhone production in 2021.
- Also Read: Apple's Indian Expansion Hit By Infrastructure and Logistics Woes, Still Experts See Exports Crossing $1T By 2028
- Apple is exploring ways to migrate production beyond China as tensions between Washington and Beijing intensify. Apple's veteran iPhone partners have added to the assembly lines at a rapid pace over the past year.
- Apple struggled last year with chaos at Foxconn's central" iPhone City" complex in Zhengzhou, exposed vulnerabilities in Apple's supply chain, and forced it to cut output estimates.
- At the same time, the Indian government offered a bouquet of incentives to boost local manufacturing.
- Of the total production, Apple exported $5 billion of iPhones in the year ended March 2023, nearly four times year-on-year. Apple will likely try to manufacture the next iPhones in India at the same time as in China, sometime in the fall of 2023, marking concurrent production for the first time in the two countries.
- Apple could assemble a quarter of all its iPhones in India by 2025.
- Apple had recognized the need to diversify its supply chain before the Covid chaos in China.
- It successfully lobbied for incentives in India and pushed suppliers Foxconn, Wistron Corp, and Pegatron to ramp up locally. The trio, which employs some 60,000 workers in India, makes models ranging from the aging iPhone 11 to the latest iPhone 14 in the country.
- Foxconn plans to invest about $700 million in a plant in a southern state to make phone components and possibly iPhones.
- Bloomberg analysts assume years of investment to significantly untangle from China's complex, efficient, and skilled supply chain from semiconductors to hardware to assembly.
- Price Action: AAPL shares traded higher by 0.49% at $160.89 premarket on the last check Thursday.