NEW DELHI- Apple Inc. said on Monday that the iPhone 14 will be made in India. This is part of a trend of companies moving production out of China because of geopolitical tensions and pandemic restrictions that have messed up supply chains in many industries.
“In the new iPhone 14 line, there are a lot of innovative new features and important safety features. We’re happy that the iPhone 14 will be made in India. ” In a statement, Apple said
This month, Apple showed off its newest line of iPhones. They will be the same price as last year’s models, but they will have better cameras, faster processors, and batteries that last longer.
India is the second largest market for smartphones in the world after China. However, Apple iPhone sales have struggled to get a big share of the market because cheaper smartphones from competitors have been more popular.
The news from the Cupertino, California-based company fits with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for local manufacturing, which has been a key goal of his government since he took office in 2014.
The tech company has put a lot of money into India. It started making the iPhone SE there in 2017 and has kept making a number of iPhone models there since then. Apple has had an online store for India for two years, but local media say that plans for a flagship store in India have been put on hold because of the pandemic.
Foxconn, which makes a lot of iPhones and has factories on the outskirts of Chennai, a city in southern India, will ship out the new model.
A JP Morgan report, cited by the Press Trust of India news agency, says that Apple is likely to move about 5% of its iPhone 14 production to India by the end of this year. By 2025, that number will rise to 25%.
Analysts think that by 2025, almost a quarter of all Apple products will be made outside of China. This is up from about 5% now. Risks to the supply chain, such as the strict COVID-19 lockdowns seen in China, are likely behind these efforts to move, which the report says will continue for the next two or three years.
Analyst at Canalys Sanyam Chaurasia said, “Apple has been trying to diversify its supply chain for a while, but these efforts have grown in the last two years because of trade sanctions between the U.S. and China.”
The tech giant made about 7 million iPhones in India last year. He also said that this news is likely to lead to a big rise in the number of Apple phones made in India.
He said that the plan to make more iPhones in India might also cause Apple to lower its prices for the Indian market, making it more competitive. “If you make things locally, you can set your prices more aggressively,” Chaurasia said.
Most of Apple Inc.’s smartphones and tablets are made in China, but the company started asking contractors in 2020 to look into the possibility of moving some production to Southeast Asia or other places after COVID-19 shutdowns messed up the flow of its products around the world.
Apple hasn’t said much about it, but news reports say the company plans to set up a factory in Vietnam to make tablets and wireless headphones.
Other companies are keeping or growing their manufacturing in China to serve the domestic market, but they are moving export-oriented work to other countries because wages and other costs are going up and it is hard for foreign executives to visit China because of anti-COVID-19 travel restrictions.
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