Apple Reportedly Seeking to Move Significantly More Production From China to India

In a bid to reduce its reliance on China as a base for operations, Apple could be planning to produce up to $40 billion worth of smartphones in India through contract manufacturers Wistron and Foxconn, reports The Indian Economic Times.

Several meetings between Apple’s senior executives and top ranking government officials over the last few months have paved the way for the iPhone maker examining the possibility of shifting nearly a fifth of its production capacity from China to India and scaling up its local manufacturing revenues, through its contract manufacturers, to around $40 billion over the next five years, say officials familiar with the matter.

A senior government official told ET the decision is being linked to India’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, which was introduced to boost local manufacturing of electrical products, particularly smartphones.

A company must manufacture at least $10 billion worth of mobile phones in a phased manner between 2020 and 2025 to benefit from the PLI scheme and are required to meet target on a yearly basis.

Currently, Apple sells $1.5 billion of phones in India, but less than $0.5 billion of those are locally manufactured. In contrast, in 2018-2019 Apple produced $220 billion worth of products in China.

According to ET, government officials are willing to look into concerns that Apple hs with the PLI scheme, including how it values plant and machinery already in use in China, and the extent of the business information required under the scheme.