Indian iPhone production has begun with Wistron looking to hire 10,000 staff, as Apple looks to reduce its reliance on Chinese manufacturing. 9to5 Mac has a nice roundup of the current situation.
India’s importance to Apple as a manufacturing center has grown considerably since the first Foxconn plant back in 2016. The goal at that stage was simply to make older and lower-end iPhone models for local sale. Apple’s primary production capabilities remained firmly centered in China. Things have changed rather dramatically since then. Apple’s increasingly uneasy relationship with China has highlighted the risks of being overly dependent on a single country for the vast majority of production. The substantial tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese-manufactured products made diversification of manufacturing a much more urgent matter. Apple reportedly responded by asking suppliers to price up the cost of moving 15-30% of production out of China. That seemed an ambitious goal at the time, with one reported failed attempt to manufacture the current flagship models in the country. However, the importance of having iPhone production much more widely dispersed around the globe was underlined when the coronavirus hit China, shutting down iPhone production in the country.
Check It Out: iPhone Production Begins in India