Foxconn to Assemble High End iPhones in India

[AlphaAtlas]

Reuters claims that Foxconn will start assembling "top-end" Apple iPhones in India as early as 2019. This is reportedly the first time Foxconn is making Apple's premium phones in India, and the source claims the Foxconn will invest about $356 million to expand an existing plant in Sriperumbudur, which could create about 25,000 new jobs . Another source, who corroborated the claims, said the move "could help both it and Apple to limit the impact of a trade war between the United States and China." Reuters notes that Apple has already produced lower-cost iPhones like the SE and 6S in India, but the move still represents a big shift out of China.

Foxconn, the world's biggest electronics contract manufacturer, is considering setting up a factory in Vietnam, Vietnamese state media reported this month. If that goes ahead, it will be one of the biggest recent steps by a major company to secure an additional production base outside of China. Foxconn has previously admitted the China-U.S. trade spat was its biggest challenge and that its senior executives were making plans to counter the impact. "Widening iPhone manufacturing in India through Foxconn will allow Apple to hedge the risk of any new U.S. trade policies," said Navkendar Singh, an associate research director at International Data Corporation. Indian taxes on import of devices and components have also heightened Apple’s headache in a market where it has only a 1 percent share by smartphone shipments.

 

[RealBeast]

Great, hopefully there aren't too many tall buildings at the sites in Vietnam or India.

 

[AceGoober]

Will there be direct line to India scammers embedded into the phones?

 

[Lakados]

Hands up if you didn't see this comming?

 

[N4CR]

China starting to get a bit too expensive now for some mass produced cheaper products like iphones.
Great for me with some much more expensive high tech stuff as it's about 1/5th the price of western stuff when you consider western high tech education salaries. That gap still has a while to go, in fact the time is 'ripe' for higher cost Chinese products.

 

[toast0]

India has a tendency to have really high tarrifs on almost everything. This just could be a sign that the Indian market has enough people buying the higher end iPhones that it's worth assembling them locally to avoid those tarrifs or receive incentives, or it's just refreshing the production line to build the latest version as the old models wind down production.

The move to Vietnam is more likely to be for global export, though.

 

[Burticus]

I guess India is the new China? Or like toast0 said maybe a move to work around some tariffs.

 

[viper1152012]

And when you activate the line you'll get a call telling you that you have the virus and many hackers and they see 8 hackers and just need to have your bank password to block them.

 

[STEM]

WTF happened to "Made in USA"!? Many of us learned to stomach "Made in China" ... But iPhones "Made in India"? Thanks, but no thanks.

 

[katanaD]

Foxconn has previously admitted the China-U.S. trade spat was its biggest challenge and that its senior executives were making plans to counter the impact

its a good thing corporations are not so big and powerful as to be able to counter... government ... actions

 

[Darunion]

WTF happened to "Made in USA"!? Many of us learned to stomach "Made in China" ... But iPhones "Made in India"? Thanks, but no thanks.

It was sad to see a lot of the US electronics companies go but they just couldn't compete with ones like sony (japan) samsung (korea) lg (korea) panasonic (japan) etc etc. Just to take a jab, at least Apple and Google are US based companies.