Apple has invested a lot of money in assembling some of its products in India to reduce its reliance on China. Although it still has a long way to go, a report today by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that nearly 14% of iPhone units shipped in 2023 were assembled in India, showing that Apple is progressing towards its goals.
iPhone production scale in India grows considerably
Kuo said on Wednesday that around 12 to 14% of global iPhone shipments were “made in India.” Of those shipments, Foxconn was responsible for about 80% of the production capacity in the country.
The analyst predicts that by 2024, Foxconn’s production scale in Zhengzhou will decrease by around 35 to 45%. The production scale is also expected to decrease by around 75 to 85% in Taiyuan. Luxshare, another manufacturing company that serves Apple, has also been relocating part of its production to India.
Apple relied solely on China for years, but this proved dangerous after the COVID-19 pandemic, as many iPhone assembly plants had to halt their operations. The COVID-19-related disruption was estimated to have cost the company a billion dollars per week. Diplomatic disagreements between the US government and China have also affected Apple’s Chinese suppliers.
In recent years, Apple has been diversifying its production chain and investing in its assembly plants in Brazil and Vietnam. However, India has shown enormous potential to replace China in the long term on a global scale.
A recent report revealed that Apple has already moved a total of $7 billion worth of iPhone production to India. The same report says that Apple plans to reach $40 billion in the next five years. This year, for the first time, Apple began assembling the new iPhone in India just a few weeks after production began in China.
According to Kuo, Apple aims to make this a standard. By the end of 2024, the company may take the early development of the iPhone 17 (which will be launched in 2025) to India, representing another significant milestone in cutting its reliance on China.
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