'Apple likely to move 25% iPhone production to India by 2025'

NEW DELHI: As India doubles down on local manufacturing of technology products, Apple is likely to move 5 per cent of its new iPhone 14 production to India by end of this year, and 25 per cent by 2025, according to a JP Morgan analysis.

Analysts have earlier predicted that Apple has shortened the production period of its new iPhones in India this year, barely six weeks or so from the production cycle in China.

Next year, Apple iPhone 15 may see its production at the Foxconn and Wistron manufacturing facilities in India at the same time with China.

"India's iPhone supply chain has historically supplied only legacy models. Interestingly, Apple has requested that EMS vendors manufacture iPhone 14/14 Plus models in India in 4Q22, within two to three months of the start of production in Mainland China," according to the JP Morgan report.

"The much shorter interval implies the increasing importance of India production and likely higher iPhone allocations to India manufacturing in the future," the report noted.

"We believe Apple only produces iPhone 14/14 Plus models in India now due to the more complex camera module alignment of the iPhone Pro series (done by EMS vendors) and higher local market demand for the iPhone 14 series (tax savings)," it added.

According to the report, Vietnam will contribute 20 per cent of all iPad and Apple Watch productions, 5 per cent of MacBook and 65 per cent of AirPods by 2025.

Buoyed by the ease-of-doing business and friendly local manufacturing policies, Apple's 'Make in India' iPhones will potentially account for close to 85 per cent of its total iPhone production for the country this year.

The import of iPhones to India is likely to come down to 15 per cent this year (from 50 per cent in 2019), while domestic manufacturing by the Cupertino-based tech giant is set to go up substantially to 85 per cent, according to market intelligence firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).

With the iPhone 14 series, Apple's iPhone production in India is slated to jump from 7 million iPhones in 2021 to touch a new milestone of around 12 million iPhones in 2022, marking a significant growth of more than 71 per cent (year-on-year), said CMR.