Apple has significantly increased its production of iPhone models in India, accounting for almost 7 percent of its total iPhone production, up from 1 percent in 2021, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
The company assembled more than $7 billion (roughly Rs. 57,396 crore) worth of iPhone models in the country in the last fiscal year, the report said.
Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Cupertino, California based tech giant is also reportedly in talks with suppliers to make MacBooks in Thailand as the company continues to expand its manufacturing footprint outside of China.
Suppliers who are participating in these talks have existing manufacturing complexes in Thailand for other clients and are discussing possible assembly and production of components and modules for MacBooks, sources from three suppliers directly involved in the conversations with Apple told Nikkei.
Apple and its key suppliers have been shifting production away from China as they seek to avoid a potential hit to business from mounting Sino-US trade frictions.
Last month, it was reported that Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn had won an order to make AirPods for Apple and planned to build a factory in India to produce the wireless earphones.
The deal will see Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker and assembler of around 70 percent of all iPhones, become an AirPods supplier for the first time and underlines efforts by the key Apple supplier to further diversify production away from China. AirPods are currently made by a range of Chinese suppliers.
One source said Foxconn will invest more than $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,650 crore) in the new India AirPods plant in the southern Indian state of Telangana. It wasn’t immediately clear how much the AirPods order would be worth.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
