Apple is planning on major growth in its India productions, it appears. As the company continues to move its manufacturing out of China, it has found a likely savior in India. According to government sources, Apple is planning on a significant growth in production in India, says PTI.
The growth plans follow Apple's first store launch in India, which is now selling the first assembled-in-India iPhone available at launch, the iPhone 15. It appears Apple has plans to increase made-in-India Apple device shipments by five-fold in the coming four to five years.
India set to do $40 billion-worth annual production for Apple in five years
In the last financial year, Apple's India business did about $7 billion worth of production. The company wants to scale this up fivefold over the next four to five years. An Indian government official has been quoted on the matter.
The government official said, "Apple has plans to increase production in India to over USD 40 billion in the next 4-5 years. It has crossed USD 7 billion in the last fiscal." The Made in India program has significance in India, and it has been used to market the new iPhone 15, too, with multiple local celebrities posting unboxing snippets noting it was a made-in-India iPhone.
The scale-up is likely to be linked to iPhones, rather than an expansion into iPad and Mac hardware. The government official noted, "They don't have any plans to participate in IT hardware PLI. They may come at a later stage but as of now their focus is to scale up existing production levels."
In addition to the local sales, Apple has also already become the largest exporter of mobile phones from India. It's likely that India will become the biggest iPhone-manufacturing country down the line with this planned expansion as Apple moves away from relying only on China for manufacturing.
