Report: Apple Plans to Move Significant Amount of iPhone Production from China to India

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

According to a recent report, tech giant Apple is planning to move a significant amount of its iPhone production from China to India.

MacRumors reports that American tech giant Apple may be moving a significant portion of its production from China to India in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Apple could reportedly be planning to produce as much as $40 billion worth of smartphones in India through manufacturers Wistron and Foxconn, according to the Indian Economic Times.

The Indian Economic Times reports:

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 reportedly told ET that the decision is linked to India’s production linked incentive (PLI) scheme which was developed to boost local manufacturing of electrical products.

In order to benefit from the PLI program, a company must produce at least $10 billion worth of mobile phones in a phased manner between 2020 and 2025 and are required to meet that target figure on a yearly basis.

Apple currently sells around $1.5 billion worth of phones in India but less than $0.5 billion of that total is from iPhones manufactured in the country. In comparison to China, between 2018 and 2019 Apple produced $220 billion worth of products in the country.

Officials are reportedly willing to look into concerns that Apple has about the PLI scheme including how it values plants and machinery already in use in China and the extent of the detailed business information that companies are required to provide under the scheme.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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