Apple is planning to manufacture iPhones for the Indian market in Bengaluru. Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker of Apple is going to set up a facility in Peenya, the city’s industrial hub, to manufacture the iPhones, according to industrial report facility will start producing iPhones from April.
According to reports Apple is very serious about beginning assembly operations and will start a full manufacture in India by the end of 2017. Local manufacture of iPhone will help Apple to reduce the price of iPhones as imports attarct about 12.5% additional duty.
Foxconn is Apple’s largest OEM, had committed to setting up a manufacturing plant in Maharashtra. Early assumptions were the plant would make only Apple products, but according to sources Foxconn has tied up with other companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus for local manufacture.
This will be Apple's second big announcement for Bengaluru this year. In May, Apple announced a design and development accelerator to grow the iOS developer community and also to guide Indian developers to leverage Apple's programming language Swift and build apps for Apple TV and Apple Watch. The facility will open in early 2017
The Bengaluru manufacturing facility underscores India's importance for the Cupertino-based company. Apple CEO Tim Cook's multi-city India tour this year signalled the growing importance of India powered by the demand for Apple products by a burgeoning middle class. Data from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research showed that Apple sold 2.5 million handsets in India from October 2015 to September 2016, a rise of more than 50% over the year-ago period.
The revenue numbers speak for themselves. Apple India clocked sales of Rs 9,997 crore in the 2016 financial year, Increased 56% from Rs 6,472 crore, previously. Apple Inc net profit grew 21% to Rs 294 crore during the same period with deeper retail penetration and lowering prices of old handset that garnered a huge user base. An email sent to Apple didn't elicit a response till the time of going to press.
Apple has published job openings on its portal for positions at its OEM's factory in Bengaluru like operations program manager and product quality manager. Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst at CyberMedia Research, said, "Apple Inc coming to India is a big booster for the make in India initiative."
