China’s loss is India’s gain: Apple considering boosting production in India

In order to curb the spread of more COVID-19 cases that have seen an upsurge recently in China, the country has imposed a strict lockdown and is aggressively taking measures to follow a Zero-Covid policy. This will obviously have an impact on the country's economic activities, and problems have started to crop up already. 

A report by the Wall Street Journal informs that Apple Inc. has told some of its contract manufacturers about its interest in boosting production outside China, citing reasons such as Beijing's strict anti-Covid policy, amongst others, based on word from people involved in the discussions. The report added the people also said that India and Vietnam (who already produce a part of Apple's global production) are among the countries the company is considering. 

The WSJ report also said that more than 90% of Apple products, like iPhones, iPads and MacBook laptops, are manufactured in China by outside contractors, as per analysts. These analysts added that the tech giant's dependence on China could be problematic due to Beijing's authoritarian Communist government and its clashes with the US.

In a CNBC interview last year, Tim Cook said while talking about the company's Q4 2021 performance, "We had a very strong performance despite larger than expected supply constraints, which we estimate to be around $6 billion." He had added that supply constraints were driven by the industry-wide chip shortages that have been talked about a lot and COVID-related manufacturing disruptions in Southeast Asia.

Peak of pandemic, Apple had planned a similar move

When COVID-19 had just hit, several companies were looking to move out of China. Even at that time, the Economic Times had reported Apple was planning to shift nearly one-fifth of its production capacity from China to India. The tech giant was looking to scale up its local manufacturing revenues; it was a move to reduce dependency on China. The report added that Apple is looking to scale its local revenue to USD 40 billion over the next five years. A senior government official told ET that India expects Apple to produce up to USD 40 billion worth of smartphones, mostly for exports through its contract manufacturers (Wistron and Foxconn). 

iPhone 13  is already getting manufactured in India

A month ago, media reports came out that Apple had started manufacturing the iPhone 13 in India and had selected Foxconn's Chennai facility for it. In a statement, Apple said that the company is looking forward to bringing the "incredible performance of the A15 Bionic chip right here in India for its local customers."

PLI scheme has given a boost

One might wonder why India is the choice now. Two years back, the Indian government launched the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to attract more and more smartphone manufacturers to shift from China and Vietnam to India. It seems to be working for the country, with a recent report by ET saying that in this fiscal, Apple's contract manufacturers are expected to make iPhones worth ₹47,000 crores in India. This is almost five times the ₹10,000 crore worth of iPhones made in India in FY22 by Foxconn and Wistron, the report added. It also said that "expected production for FY23 is more than twice the requirement for the iPhone makers together to qualify for incentives for the second year under the PLI scheme for smartphones."

A report last year by Financial Express said that Foxconn and Wistron had hired 7,500 workers each after August 2020 after PLI for smartphones became operational. Interestingly, the vendors supplying to Foxconn and Wistron - Sunwoda, Foxlink, Salcomp, etc., also hired approximately 5,000 additional workforces to support the manufacturing of Foxconn and Wistron.

Apple’s rival likes India too

Samsung, too, wants to reduce its dependency on China. Just like Apple, Vietnam is already a smartphone manufacturing hub for Samsung Electronics Company. When the pandemic was in full swing in 2020, Samsung had expressed that it may shift a major part of its smartphone production to India from Vietnam and other countries. It was finalising plans to produce devices worth over USD 40 billion in India, people familiar with the matter told ET.

Calling it "The World's Largest Mobile Factory", Samsung inaugurated a mobile phone manufacturing facility in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, in 2018. It had said that with the help of this facility, Samsung planned to double its current capacity for mobile phones in Noida from 68 million units a year to 120 million units a year in a phase-wise expansion that will be completed by 2020.

Problems do persist; remember the Wistron factory vandalism?

At the end of 2020, media reports and videos started circulating of violent clashes breaking out in Wistron Corporation's iPhone production plant in India at Narasapura (60 km from Bengaluru). Media reports said that thousands of contract workers showed up at the iPhone factory to demand better work hours as well as claim their unpaid wages.

The clashes turned quite violent soon, and workers started smashing windows and vandalising cars. A Reuters report mentioned, Wistron said the damages due to this incident caused up to "$7.12 million in damage though production facilities were not as badly hit as reported."

In February 2021, two months after the incident, Apple said that a comprehensive set of corrective actions had been completed, and Wistron had restructured its recruiting team and enhanced training and support for workers.