Apple will manufacture the most expensive iPhone models - Pro and Pro Max, in India for for the first time in 2024, reported ag. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources.
According to them, the company's key partner - Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, will start assembling smartphones in India “within a few weeks” after Apple introduced them this fall. Foxconn has already begun training several thousand workers at its plant in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to produce the first iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models. Other partners of the company may join the assembly of Apple smartphones in this country in the future - the local division of Taiwan's Pegatron and India's Tata Group.
As the agency notes, the start of iPhone assembly in India will be a major step in the context of Apple's promotion in this country, which began in 2021 thanks to the policy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi aimed at developing high-tech production. Today, the US tech giant still makes most of its smartphones in China, but is looking to diversify production amid tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Ag. Bloomberg recalls that in the past fiscal year (ended in March), Apple produced iPhone smartphones in India for a total of 14 billion USD, which is about 14% of the total production. In 2024, the iPhone 16 assembled in this country is expected to go on sale worldwide at the same time as the company's other new smartphones.
India is becoming an increasingly important production base for Apple, which has been developing production in this country for several years. Since 2017, the first generation iPhone SE has been assembled there; in 2020, in collaboration with Wistron, in Narsapur, near Bangalore, the assembly of the second generation iPhone SE 2020 begins. According to forecasts, by 2025, Apple may start assembling a quarter of the total iPhone production in India.< /span>