iPhone manufacturing in India exceeds 14 billion dollars

American devices maker Apple manufactured iPhones worth $14 billion in India in the last financial year. About 67 percent of the iPhones made in the country are assembled by Apple’s supplier Foxconn and about 17 percent by Pegatron. In the last few years, manufacturing and sales of iPhones have increased rapidly in the country.

Bloomberg report states that Tata Group’s plant in Karnataka also has a stake in the manufacturing of iPhones. Last year, Tata Group had taken over this plant from Wistron. Apple declined to comment on the Bloomberg report. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Taiwan’s Pegatron is in final talks to sell its iPhone manufacturing plant near Chennai in Tamil Nadu to Tata Group. Under this deal, Tata Group plans to hold at least 65 percent stake in the joint venture operating this plant.

A source with knowledge of this matter had told Reuters that Tata Group will operate this joint venture through its unit Tata Electronics. The plant has approximately 10,000 workers and manufactures approximately 5 million iPhones annually. Pegatron last year sold its iPhone manufacturing plant in China to Luxshare for about $290 million. Due to increasing tensions between America and China, Apple has planned to diversify its supply chain outside China.

Apart from this, Tata Group is building another plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. In this, Pegatron can be its joint venture partner. Apple has provided employment to more than 1.5 lakh people in India after participating in the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. The age of most of these people is between 19 to 24 years. iPhone sales in China, one of the company’s biggest markets, have fallen 24 percent year-on-year in the first six weeks of this year. It is facing tough competition from companies like Huawei of China. The report of market research firm Counterpoint states that Huawei’s sales have increased by about 64 percent during this period.