Saturday, 05 Oct, 2024
By: Deepak Maggu
In a bid to diversify its smartphone production from China, American tech giant Apple Inc is planning to manufacture the iPhone 14 series in India.
In a bid to diversify its smartphone production from China, American tech giant Apple Inc is planning to manufacture the iPhone 14 series in India. A major reason for this is the ongoing tension between the US and China and nationwide lockdown imposed by Xi Jinping's administration that has hindered economic activity in the country. Most of America's big companies are looking for an alternative to China, and Apple is at the forefront of this effort.
The company is trying to ramp up its production in India so as to shorten the lag in production to 2 months. In order to reduce the customary six to nine-month manufacturing delay for new iPhone launches, the company has been collaborating with its Taiwan-based supplier Foxconn, who has studied the process of shipping items from China and assembling the iPhone 14 at its plant in Chennai. A simultaneous launch in China and India was ultimately decided to be unfeasible this year by Apple and Foxconn, while it still remains a long-term objective. The company is planning to launch iPhone 14 in India by late October or November, a month after it enters Chinese markets.
The decision by Apple demonstrates the feasibility of Narendra Modi government’s flagship program Make in India. Under this initiative, the country produced mobile phones worth Rs 5,277 crore in FY22, more than double from Rs 2,334 crore in FY21. The country had only two mobile phone manufacturing facilities in 2014 which has now crossed over 200. This year, India has emerged as the second largest market for mobile manufactures.The huge increase in production is attributed its production-linked incentive programme in 2020.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, said in a reply to Parliament, “Due to the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme, India is currently one of the fastest-growing mobile phone manufacturers in the world and has emerged as the second-largest manufacturer of mobile handsets in the world in volume terms”.
According to a recent report by Deloitte, the demand for smartphones in India is predicted to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 6%, from 300 million in 2021 to around 400 million in 2026.Industry experts believe that this is the best time for India to capture the electronic manufacturing sector in the backdrop of the US-China trade war.
