iPhone 17 to Be Assembled in India as Apple Aims to Further Diversify Supply Chain

Introductory production on the standard iPhone 17 will start in India in the second half of 2025, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo says that new product introduction (NPI) for the ‌iPhone‌ 17 will happen in India, marking the first time that Apple begins development of a new ‌iPhone‌ outside of China.

apple india
Apple will opt to assemble the standard ‌iPhone‌ 17 in India because it has a "lower difficulty" design that will minimize risk. Apple has been manufacturing older iPhones and other devices in India since for several years now in an effort to move more of its manufacturing out of China. Apple has slowly started giving factories in India more responsibility, and began iPhone 14 production in the country just a few weeks after the device launched in September 2022. iPhone 15 production started even earlier, with factories in the country assembling the base ‌iPhone 15‌ model prior to launch, but assembly still started in China first.

Apple works with Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata (new owner of Wistron) to manufacture iPhones in India, with Foxconn handling 75 to 80 percent of the device assembly. Foxconn has invested more than $500 million in India to ramp up its manufacturing capabilities.

As of now, Kuo believes that 12 to 14 percent of global ‌iPhone‌ shipments are made in India, with that proportion to increase to 20 to 25 percent by 2024. In addition to allowing Apple to move manufacturing away from China, increasing production in India provides Apple with an opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the Indian government. India is a key market for Apple due to growing demand for Apple products in the country.

Apple in 2023 opened its first retail stores in Mumbai, but online sales have been available in India since 2020.

Top Rated Comments

Zc456 Avatar
5 weeks ago
Honestly, the sole dependency on a single country to manufacture everything was just stupid to begin with.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jhonjhon236 Avatar
5 weeks ago

Any rumors on what features will be in the iPhone 17? Will it be foldable?
It will fold if you try hard enough.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple_Robert Avatar
5 weeks ago
I wish Apple could do the same in the U.S. of A.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jdavid_rp Avatar
5 weeks ago

They had no choice. The way relations are between certain countries… they have to work on redundancy in where their devices are manufactured.

I’d guess in 10 to 20 years time, robotics and AI will have progressed that much further that you could automate pretty much all of this. Then it will come to where the energy is cheapest to run operations, the distance for transport, where the raw resources are coming from. It will not be about people anymore.
I think the actual system is already focused on the benefits and not the people
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fuzzball84 Avatar
5 weeks ago

Honestly, the sole dependency on a single country to manufacture everything was just stupid to begin with.
But it happened with tech time and time again… remember when everything used to be made in Japan… then it was made in China.. and now increasingly I see other countries appear… I think it’s at a point now where not one country will dominate as much as has happened in the past 20 to 40 years.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jz0309 Avatar
5 weeks ago

In the early days they had no choice. China basically has megacities based around electronics component industrial manufacturing and assembly. They were the only place to get that stuff. Still are. Only thing that appears to be changing is more final assembly.
“We” (the US and Europe) made China what it is today, and back in the 89s when it started - it was deemed a good idea by the political forces… and we would not be where we are today (from a technology perspective) if it hadn’t been that way…
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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