Apple iPhone manufacturer and Taiwanese electronics company Wistron will wind down and withdraw business from India after 15 years. The company is going to sell its plant in Kolar, near Bengaluru to Indian conglomerate Tata Group, says a report by ET Telecom.
It is being said that Wistron failed to go deeper into the iPhone maker's supply chain and faced challenges from local employment norms due to which it was forced to leave the country.
Tata Group has been in talks with Wistron since last year for the transaction.
To recall, a report by HBL said last month that the Taiwanese firm is likely to approach the National Company Law Tribunal and the Registrar of Companies to dissolve its operations in India within the next year, the report added, citing sources.
The key iPhone assembler will wind up operations in India after Tata Electronics takes over operations of the Karnataka factory and starts manufacturing new Apple products.
Wistron’s first India subsidiary was incorporated in 2008 in India as a sales and maintenance service centre, “ICT Service Management Solutions (India) Private Limited,” says the company’s annual report.
Meanwhile, homegrown conglomerate Tata Group could become the fourth assembler for Apple iPhone 15 series in India. The other assemblers of the iPhone 15 lineup will be biggest Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn along with Luxshare and Pegatron while the fourth manufacturer will be Tata Group, the first local Indian manufacturer, market research firm TrendForce recently said.
TrendForce says that Tata Group will assemble a small chunk of the iPhone 15 series models in India. The conglomerate has recently acquired Wistron, so it now has got the company’s India iPhone production line. Tata Group, therefore, will reportedly become the new contract partner for iPhone manufacturing in India, and the fourth manufacturer for Apple after Foxconn, Pegatron, and Luxshare.