New Delhi: In a major boost to Make in India, the production of Apple iPhones in India will likely go up as the country is set to get its biggest manufacturing unit near Bengaluru. Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday announced that India’s biggest Apple iPhone manufacturing unit will be set up in Hosur, Tamil Nadu.
The unit will also provide employment to 60,000 people and. “Apple’s iPhone is now getting made in India and it’s the biggest plant in India is being set up at Hosur near Bengaluru. 60,000 people work in a single factory,” Vaishnaw said at the Janjatiya Gaurav Divas ceremony.
The first 6,000 employees of these 60,000 employees are our tribal sisters from places nearby Ranchi and Hazaribagh. Tribal sisters have been trained to make Apple iPhone, he added.
Apple has outsourced the manufacturing of iPhone enclosures to Tata Electronics, which has a plant at Hosur. Apple iPhones are made by electronics giants – Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron – in India.
The news of India getting its biggest iPhone manufacturing plant comes as Reuters reported that Apple supplier Foxconn is looking to expand their works in India by at least four times by the next two years. It is worth mentioning here that Foxconn’s plant in China’s Zhengzhou – the largest facility for iPhones in the world – was put under Covid-19 lockdown earlier this month.
The Reuters report quoted people familiar with the matter and said Taiwan-based Foxconn has plans to boost the workforce at its plant in southern India to 70,000 by adding 53,000 more workers over the next two years. The Tamil Nadu plant of Foxconn is much smaller than their Zhengzhou unit.
Currently, iPhones are assembled in India by at least three of Apple’s global suppliers – Foxconn and Pegatron in Tamil Nadu; and Wistron in Karnataka.
