India is said to be the second largest smartphone market in the world. Apple’s best quarter performance in the country came during Q4 2020. More and more companies are moving away from China
Apple has started the assembly of its latest smartphone iPhone 12 in India. It, at the time, is not clear whether which of Apple’s contract manufacturers is assembling these latest iPhone models in the country but a report by Reuters notes that it is Foxconn that is responsible for doing the same.
It is worth mentioning here that Apple had begun assembling iPhones in India starting 2017. Wistron was Apple’s first contact manufacturer to start these operations in the country. In the series of events that followed the lock downs announced in India last year, Wistron, Pegatron as well as Foxconn have announced plans to invest around $900 million in the country.
Apple for FY 2020 has reported revenue figures of Rs 13.756 crore. These figures, during FY 2019, stood at Rs 10,674 crore. This 29 per cent year-on-year jump in revenue also represents a jump of nearly 267 per cent in the profits Apple made in India during FY 2020 compared to Fy 2019. The company, last year, had announced an investment of $13 million (approx Rs 1000 crore) for India. Apple, through the investments, is planning to start an online retail platform and launch physical stores in the country.
Foxconn Hon Hai, Wistron and Pegatron, all the three contract manufacturers of Apple, had got the go-ahead for inclusion in the PLI scheme announced for smartphone manufacturers in India last year. Apple has been trying to move a lot of its manufacturing capabilities away from China lately. These actions have been considered as a way of Apple tackling the trade tensions between China and its home country USA.
“Nice to see our efforts to make India a big hub of mobile and components manufacturing is attracting global attention,” read a tweet byIndia’s technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad following news of iPhone 12 production in India.
Samsung, another tech giant, had recently announced that it will make an investment of Rs 4,825 crore to relocate its mobile and IT display production unit from China to NCR in Uttar Pradesh. The UP government’s cabinet headed by chief minister Yogi Adityanath approved special incentives to Samsung Display Noida Private Limited. The manufacturing unit is expected to generate direct employment of 510 people besides giving indirect employment.
Toyota Tsusho, a trading arm of Toyota Group and component maker Sumida Corporation, are looking to shift their manufacturing based from China to India. Out of Rs 1.15 trillion worth of electronics components that India imported in 2019-20, 37 per cent were imported from China. India exported smartphone components worth Rs 56,039 crore during 2019-20. Out of the total amount, smartphone components worth Rs 25,441 crore were exported from China.
