The commerce minister of India has claimed that the iPhone maker Apple Inc. is planning to manufacture a quarter of all its iPhones in India.

Apple is “another success story” for India, said Piyush Goyal, India’s minister of commerce and industry, while highlighting the success of the fifth-largest economy of the world.

“They’re [Apple] already at about 5-7% of their manufacturing in India. If I am not mistaken, they are targeting to go up to 25% of their manufacturing,” Goyal said at a conference.

There were however no comments on the issue from Apple.

Assembling of its flagship iPhone 14 was started in India by Apple last year. That also marked the first instance that the Cupertino, California, based tech giant manufactured its latest model in India so close to its launch.

India has been a destination for Apple for making its iPhones since 2017. However the models made in India were typically the older less costly models.  

Apple’s iPhone’s primary contract manufacturer Taiwanese firm Foxconn, is currently assembling the iPhones in its facility at Sriperumbudur, a town on the outskirts of Chennai in Southern India.

In a note issued to clients in September last year, analysts of JPMorgan said that the Apple could assemble about a quarter of all of its iPhones globally in India by 2025.

In recent years, geopolitical reasons have forced Apple to look for ways to diversify manufacturing away from China where the company presently manufactures that majority of its iPhones. The insecurity and vulnerability of the manufacturing and supply chain of the company in China came out in the forefront in 2022 following a series of outbreaks of the Covid pandemic in the country along with worker protests the world’s largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China, which is operated by Foxconn. These dual incidents severely hampered production at iPhones in China.

There were reports last year of the Indian government trying to find out ways to shift some of the iPad manufacturing from China to the country.   

It is however noteworthy that the market share of Apple in the Indian smartphone market is a mere 5%. However Apple CEO Tim Cook has for long envisioned the Indian market for international growth of the company.  

(Adapted from Nasdaq.com)