Apple to start Indian iPhone manufacturing within next two months
Apple's Indian manufacturing will finally begin within the next 4 to 6 weeks at a Wistron plant in Bangalore -- and more ambitious plans are already being hatched.
The first products to be manufactured will actually be the iPhone 6 and 6s, a government official told the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone SE will start coming off assembly lines in about 3 months.
"Almost all preparations have been done for launching Apple's first phase project in Bangalore through Wistron," the official said.
Recently Apple took the unusual move of launching a 32-gigabyte iPhone 6 in the country, presumably to deal with its main problem in growing marketshare: price. Current-generation iPhones are well beyond the means of the average person, so Apple has been keeping devices on sale in India well past when they've disappeared in other regions. The company controls less than 5 percent of the Indian smartphone market.
An analyst with CMR, Faisal Kawoosa, noted that local manufacturing will let Apple get past import tariffs and could drop the cost of iPhones by $100 or more, finally making Apple competitive with other smartphone vendors already manufacturing in the country.
The Indian government, however, hasn't yet "accepted most of the demands of the iPhone manufacturer," Trade Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told legislators in a note to Parliament on Wednesday. Earlier this year Apple delivered a "wish list" of concessions, among them a 15-year tax holiday on imported components and equipment.
"We will try to accommodate as much of their [Apple's] demands as possible, but they too appreciate and understand our limitations," claimed another official described as working closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Apple is even reportedly negotiating for the next step in its production plans, which could see it bring in more suppliers to make parts and export finished iPhones. Currently, iPhones are manufactured and exported exclusively from China.
Apple has meanwhile been negotiating to open its first official stores in India. Normally foreign single-brand retailers are required to source 30 percent of their components locally, and its current trajectory could at last meet that requirement.
The first products to be manufactured will actually be the iPhone 6 and 6s, a government official told the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone SE will start coming off assembly lines in about 3 months.
"Almost all preparations have been done for launching Apple's first phase project in Bangalore through Wistron," the official said.
Recently Apple took the unusual move of launching a 32-gigabyte iPhone 6 in the country, presumably to deal with its main problem in growing marketshare: price. Current-generation iPhones are well beyond the means of the average person, so Apple has been keeping devices on sale in India well past when they've disappeared in other regions. The company controls less than 5 percent of the Indian smartphone market.
An analyst with CMR, Faisal Kawoosa, noted that local manufacturing will let Apple get past import tariffs and could drop the cost of iPhones by $100 or more, finally making Apple competitive with other smartphone vendors already manufacturing in the country.
The Indian government, however, hasn't yet "accepted most of the demands of the iPhone manufacturer," Trade Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told legislators in a note to Parliament on Wednesday. Earlier this year Apple delivered a "wish list" of concessions, among them a 15-year tax holiday on imported components and equipment.
"We will try to accommodate as much of their [Apple's] demands as possible, but they too appreciate and understand our limitations," claimed another official described as working closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Apple is even reportedly negotiating for the next step in its production plans, which could see it bring in more suppliers to make parts and export finished iPhones. Currently, iPhones are manufactured and exported exclusively from China.
Apple has meanwhile been negotiating to open its first official stores in India. Normally foreign single-brand retailers are required to source 30 percent of their components locally, and its current trajectory could at last meet that requirement.
Comments
They could do similar in the USA and have "Designed in California, Assembled in Texas" for example on the devices, pleasing many 'mericans.
Lord! We talk about this time and again. Apple, and others have explained this numerous times.
its not shameful at all. It can't happen here. I really don't know what's wrong with you people. Do you believe that nonsense that Trump spouts? Assembly of phones is done in countries that are developing because American workers will never again work the way they do there. Around the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, we used to have workers live in barracks, buy exclusively from the company store, and send a bit of money home to their families. Mining companies were the last to do this kind of thing.it even inspired a famous song.
this is the way it works in China, India, and a few other developing nations. People move hundreds, or even thousands of miles to move into a barracks where they have a single size bed with a foot locker, and a cabinet on the wall above the head board, and that's it. If the company needs 10,000 workers late Saturday night, they go into the barracks and wake these people up and put them on the lines. They live that way, often for years.
there is simply no way that workers in any developed country will ever do that again.
i can't believe the total lack of understanding some people here, in this country, have about these matters. I just read a financial article that discussed the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country. 13% is due to trade deals, and a whopping 87% is due to automation. What jobs we lost to trade deals is mostly made up by jobs in import industries and distribution, but no jobs are gained, in any real numbers for losses due to automation. This ratio is going to get worse. Even if, somehow, these lines could be automated, and brought here, we would see virtually no job creation. But this is years off.
Manufacturing is making parts. Assembly is putting these parts together. It's the last stage only. It's not considered to be actual manufacturing. It adds virtually nothing to the value of the product. In the old days when I had my manufacturing company, assembly was a much more complex process. Not these days.
And, I'd gladly pay a bit more for an iPhone made in the US but I'm sure Cook and crew would never risk lower their profit margin and therefore their bonus to have this happen. You are basically saying if slave labor cannot make our things then they just won't get made. That is the most shameful of all.
the biggest problem for USA made products is the american consumer. Honestly, how many people here have gone out of their way, over the years, to buy American made products when they cost more than the same thing made overseas? I'll bet, that if honestly thought about, none of you here can say that.
you entirely missed my point. The barracks is where many manufacturing and mining people did live in back then. That's exactly the point. That's how manufacturers got cheap, controlled, labor. That hasn't happened for a long time here. But it's what is happening in developing countries now, and we can't compete with that.
maybe if Carrier, and others, did have that kind of captive labor, they would stay here.
the other thing is that those high paying manufacturing Jobs in the auto industry an steel industry were because of very strong unions. That's gone too with the assault on unions we see happening from conservatives. Most factory jobs in this country have never been high paying Jobs. That's a myth.
Oh, I should add, it's not slave labor. These people take those jobs, because for those countries, pay and benefits are pretty damn good. They can leave when their contract is up, usually a contract is for a year. We have contracts like that here too.
Please, assembly is literally that. It's not just screwing the back on. Nevertheless, assembly is estimated to only add $6-9 to the value of the manufacturing process - very little, in other words.
but it's been estimated that it would cost about $20 to assembly them here, if we could, which we can't now. But every dollar added to the chain of costs adds more to the final price. It depends on how early it is in that process. So the phone price would rise by between $30 -40 if assembled here. That's way too much.
This is a bit different than forging steel parts for building a car, which can originate domestically relatively easily. But we aren't going to be building a components manufacturing industry any time soon.
And, I buy exclusively Apple products (iMac, iPhone, iPad, etc) as they are the best for many reasons. I do use Windows at work but that is not by choice.
And, that's like saying, 200 years ago, the cotton industry is a cut throat business, we need slaves to say competitive. It doesn't make it right.
We could build a components manufacturing industry if we wanted, we used to have many chip foundries until they were off shored. And, we hardly make steel anymore either.