Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn Technology Group, said that the iPhone will go into mass production in India this year. Foxconn Technology group are the largest assembler of Apply Inc.’s handsets. This will lead to a major shift in long concentrated production in China.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited Gou in India to expand the Taiwanese company’s plan in India. The production of iPhones in Bangalore was limited to older phones only but now with the plans, there will be the production of recent models too.
India is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. Gou says that The Taiwanese company is going to be playing a major role in the future of India’s smartphone market.
Apple loses shares in India to Xiaomi corporation and Huawei technologies co. partly due to its high prices. The price of Redmi note 7 is 1/10th of the price of Apple’s iPhone’s Xs in the country. That is why, out of 140 million sales of smartphones, only 1.7 million were iPhone’s.
Local production would help the Cupertino, California-based company avoid import duties of 20%. Also, this would help with the retail push of Apply in India. The company needs to meet a 30% local sourcing rule to be able to open its own stores in the country. With the ongoing trade tensions of China and the USA, local production will also help to diversify Apple and Foxconn’s manufacturing footprint away from China.
Gou plans to increase the software people in India from a dozer to 600, He said that he has been talking to the Government about his plans. He plans to take a step back from daily operations to concentrate on this.