Apple has added another assembly partner to its iPhone 14 production roster in India as it seeks to build out its manufacturing base outside of China, reports Bloomberg.
Taiwanese contract manufacturer Pegatron is set to become the second Apple supplier to produce iPhone 14 models in the country behind Foxconn, which began production in India in September.
Apple's Taiwanese assembly partners Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron all have iPhone manufacturing plants in India, where iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone 13, and most recently iPhone 14 models are being produced, with the latest model enjoying a marked reduction in the delay between Chinese and India output from months to weeks.
Apple's iPhone exports from India have amounted to $1 billion in the five months since April. While small by China's standards, India's increasing iPhone output signals Apple's willingness to plough investment into the country as an alternative to China's electronics assembly dominance, which has suffered recently from the country's zero-COVID policy.
Foxconn's main Zhengzhou plant, which employs about 200,000 people, has been hit by the stringent curbs after an outbreak at the factory, which led the city of about 10 million people to be locked down as a result. iPhone production could fall by as much as 30% next month due to the tightening COVID-19 restrictions in China, according to one report.
Despite the confluence of events, Apple's manufacturing expansion plans in India have been in place for some time are not connected to China's lockdown troubles, although they do highlight Apple's deep reliance on the one country.
In diversifying its production lines away from China, Apple is playing a long game that won't see a major impact on its supply chain for many years. Bloomberg recently reported that it would take around eight years to move just 10% of Apple's production capacity out of China, where about 98% of iPhones are still made.
