Friday 12 May, 2023, Bengaluru, India
Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, announced in a filing on Tuesday that it has purchased a sizable plot of land outside of Bengaluru, the Indian IT hub, as part of its efforts to diversify away from China as a source of production.
Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industries, is the largest contract electronics manufacturer in the world and a key supplier of Apple iPhones.
Both Foxconn and Apple are looking to shift their manufacturing base from China to India after the Chinese government announced strict COVID guidelines after 3 years since the news of the pandemic broke out. There is also ongoing industrial unrest that makes China not an ideal place for the US-based company’s production. The ongoing diplomatic tensions with the United States are another reason for the recent happening in Bengaluru.
According to the report, the land, which is larger than 50 Manhattan city blocks, was purchased for three billion rupees ($37 million) by Foxconn Hon Hai Technology India Mega Development. It further stated that another Foxconn division was purchasing land usage rights to a 480,000-square-meter property in the Nghe An region of Vietnam.
In that same month, Bloomberg News reported that Foxconn intended to spend $700 million building a new facility in Karnataka. When he was there, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has pushed international companies to locate production in South Asia. Since 2019, Foxconn has produced Apple mobile devices in India at its facility in Tamil Nadu, a southern state. According to local media, the corporation is anticipated to start construction on a new plant in Telangana state the following week.
Chief Executive Tim Cook unveiled Apple’s first two retail locations in the most populous nation last month as part of the company’s own drive into India. The California-based company is placing a significant wager on the 1.4 billion-person country, which behind China, has the second-highest percentage of smartphone users worldwide.
“With domestic iPhone sales of 6.7 million last year, Navkendar Singh of market intelligence company International Data Corporation told AFP that Apple has already shown signs of success in India. This is good growth considering that Apple plays at the price range of more than $500 all the time,”added Navkendar.
Apple said in September of last year that it will produce the newest iPhone 14, only weeks after the flagship model was introduced, in India. According to Bloomberg, the nation produced 7% of Apple’s iPhones last year, trailing only the United States, China, Japan, and a few other nations. Violent demonstrations at the largest iPhone plant in the nation, which is also operated by Foxconn, halted production last November in China, which is by far the largest maker of Apple goods.
Source- India Today
