Great News! Apple iPhone 12 will be Manufactured in India

Apparently, Apple’s one of the biggest suppliers Wistron has started trial production of the upcoming iPhone 12 at a facility near Bengaluru, India. It has been reported that Wistron is all set to hire as much as 10,000 new staff for the manufacturing facility in India.

The American tech giant has been making lower-priced iPhones in India since 2017 and the iPhone 12 would be the 7^th smartphone model that would be produced in India. However, it is the first high-end device to be manufactured in India. Also, the production of iPhone SE is all set to start in India by the end of 2020. According to media reports, the new facility would manufacture the iPhone 12 and the older plant in Bengaluru would manufacture the iPhone SE.

So, Apple is aggressively stepping up its manufacturing efforts in India in an effort to move away from China. Apple’s supplier Samsung and Pegatron are now expected to set-up production facilities in the sub-continent. Additionally, Foxconn has already announced that it will invest as much as $1 billion in India. Although Foxconn has already started its first manufacturing plant in India a few years back.

Various government initiatives are making India based production an attractive affair for the large tech giants. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” initiative also demands at least 30 percent of total products sold by foreign brands to be made in India.

Also, increased production in India will allow the Cupertino based organization to price iPhone 12 a bit more competitively in the country. As the local production will help the organization to bypass import duties that are levied on imported products, which could be as high as 22 percent. Also, the company is all set to start its first flagship store in India by 2021.

Currently, India is the second-largest smartphone market on the planet earth. However, Apple only has a market share of only 1 percent even after dominating the premium smartphone category. It is mainly due to the premium pricing of iPhones and increasing competition from the Chinese smartphone makers that offer a much broader portfolio of smartphones.

However, it is still not clear if Apple will not have any iPhones 12 ready in time for the September launch. It is also possible that Apple might announce a couple of iPhone 12 models for now and delay the higher-end variants by the end of the year. This year Apple may announce three iPhone models, namely iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Although all of these names are still guess, there’s no way of confirming these names until the launch day,

Previously in July 2018, Samsung launched the world’s biggest mobile phone factory in Noida, India. The factory is now aiming to manufacture as much as 68 million phones by the end of 2020. Few Chinese brands such as Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi have started producing smartphones in India.

Also, the Indian government is trying to break the Chinese dominance in the electronics market by bringing up a PLI scheme. According to the scheme, international brands will eventually get an incentive on smartphones having invoice value of 15,000 Indian Rupee and above. However, no threshold has been decided for domestic organizations, and due to this threshold brands like Samsung, Apple, OnePlus will be benefited the most. Whereas brands like Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi may lose out, as they mostly cater to the sub 15,000 price segment.

The government officials now feel that the PLI scheme will help the subcontinent to become a top smartphone manufacturer. India became the planet’s 2^nd largest smartphone maker in 2017. According to industry experts, the mobile manufacturing industry is very positive regarding the government’s move and this will eventually lead smartphone companies to move their smartphone supply chains in India, which will also help to create new jobs and bring more investment.