Apple Begins iPhone 14 Production In India

Tech giant Apple has started manufacturing its latest iPhone 14 in India, and the ‘Made-in-India’ phones will start to reach local customers in the next few days.

The phones will be shipped from contract manufacturer and iPhone assembler Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur facility on the outskirts of Chennai, as per reports.

“We’re excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India. The new iPhone 14 lineup introduces groundbreaking new technologies and important safety capabilities,” Apple told news agency PTI.

The US-based company is reportedly considering moving more iPhone production to India amid rising geopolitical tensions and strict Covid-19 lockdowns in China hampering production of iPhone components.

Apple’s contract manufacturers are likely to make iPhones worth INR 47,000 Cr in the current fiscal compared to production of iPhones worth INR 10,000 Cr in the country by Foxconn in the last financial year.

According to a recent report by brokerage JP Morgan, Apple may manufacture one out of four iPhones in India by 2025. Besides, the tech giant may move around 5% of iPhone 14 production to India by late 2022, analysts at the brokerage stated.

Last month, Apple launched four models of iPhone 14 series priced between INR 79,900 to INR 1,89,900. In India, Apple started selling from September 16. However, iPhone 14 Plus will be available from October 7. 

In the second quarter of 2022, Apple sold more than 1.2 Mn iPhones in India, recording a 94% year-on-year (YoY) growth, as per a report by CyberMedia Research (CMR). 

In its last earnings call, Apple said that its revenue almost doubled in India in the June quarter of 2022. 

“We saw June quarter revenue records in both developed and emerging markets with very strong double-digit growth in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam and a near doubling of revenue in India,” Tim Cook, Apple CEO, said.  

The latest development comes as a boost to the government’s vision to increase manufacturing of mobiles and other electronic components in the country. It has also launched a production linked incentive scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing to boost domestic production of mobile phones and other electronic components.