Apple's Manufacturing Shift To India Hits Roadblocks: Report

Apple's bid to shift production from China to India has been hit by challenges, says a report by the Financial Times.

Apple currently locally assembles the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus in India.

Apple's bid to shift production from China to India has been hit by challenges, says a report by the Financial Times. Apple currently locally assembles the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus in India. Apple's move of moving production away from China after the country's strict COVID-related restrictions dented supply chains across industries and as trade and geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington escalated.

At a casings factory in southern India run by conglomerate Tata Group, only about half of the components from the production line are in good enough shape to be sent to Apple's supplier Foxconn, the Financial Times report added, citing a person familiar with the matter. This 50% "yield" does not meet the tech giant's goal for zero defects, adding that the company's process of expanding in India has been slow in part due to challenges in logistics, tariffs and infrastructure.

It should be noted that Apple started assembling iPhones in India back in 2017, but until 2022, the Cupertino, California-headquartered tech giant was assembling older generation iPhone models in India. Apple launched the iPhone 14 models in September and the company began assembling the new iPhone 14 in the country, 10 days after the global launch of the iPhone 14 series, thus, highlighting Apple’s decreasing dependability on China.

To recall, Apple has outpaced rival Samsung to become the first company to export smartphones worth $1 billion or Rs 8,100 crore in a month from India, a report by The Economic Times (ET) said last month. December was also a record month for the smartphone industry with mobile phone exports of over Rs 10,000 crore, data showed, the report added.

According to government officials, the total exports would have been higher if Samsung's production unit had been working at its full capacity. However, it was shut for about 15 days last month for regular maintenance, the ET report added.