Salient points
- Apple Inc. and Foxconn are heavily investing in India, with Foxconn who has committed further $ 1.5 billion, reporting the confidence in the future manufacturing of Apple in the country despite the concerns raised by the comments of former president Donald Trump.
- The manufacturing success of Apple in India recorded a 60% increase in the value of the products produced, reaching $ 22 billion, contributing significantly to the exports of electronics of India and showing a rare success in the industrial policy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
- While Apple and Foxconn commit themselves to expanding operations in India, challenges remain, in particular to overcome the restrictions of the Chinese government that hinder the movement of the crucial staff necessary to establish a new manufacturing ecosystem.
Apple Inc. and its main production contractor Hon you have Precision Industry Co. are still betting on India. When Hon have – better known as Foxconn – he revealed through an exchange that last week was putting other $ 1.5 billion in his operations there, some nerves in New Delhi calmed down.The concerns about the future of Apple in the country had been exhibited by President Donald Trump, who last month said he said to the CEO of the Tim Cook company that “I don’t want you to build in India”. This seemed to contradict the hopes, shared by both Cupertino and Nuova Delhi, and most of the iPhones for the US market would come from India by the end of 2026.
But on the ground, Apple’s turn to the nation of southern Asia seems to be well rooted. Reports of a new Foxconn Campus have emerged intended to host 30,000 employees – the greatest effort of this type in the recent history of India – and that another producer of contracts, Tata Electronics, is now assembling the iPhone 16 in its southern Endo plant.However, CEO and politicians may have started to realize that the difficulties involved in the movement – or duplicate – an entire manufacturing ecosystem extends beyond the Placation of Trump. This is a complex environment and there are serious obstacles to move it from China. American politics is only one, albeit perhaps the strongest.
Of course, Apple has already been very successful in India. That’s why Trump also talks about it. In the last year, the value of its manufactured products has risen by 60%, to $ 22 billion. Over $ 17 billion are exported; Thanks to Apple, the 38 billion dollars of electronic exports to India now earn more than its world -renowned pharmaceutical sector. No other investment has produced nothing close to this performance scale. In fact, it could be the only success of Prime Minister Narendra’s pivot ways for industrial policy in the middle of his decade in power.This rare victory took place because Apple and its suppliers have committed themselves to moving production to India and why both federal governments and the state regulations have rewritten the regulations and authorizations to help them move. Politicians have maintained this support, even when there could be a price to pay. After a border clash between China and India in 2020 who killed 20 of his soldiers, Indian officials limited investments from Beijing. These restrictions have slowly softened since then, mainly to ensure that Apple’s contractors were not captured by the bureaucracy.
This experience should have served as a reminder of New Delhi that attracting an entire ecosystem needs three sets of actors to cooperate: companies, the destination market for their products and the geography of origin. Apple and Foxconn could be on board; Trump and his rates could be managed, but what about China?
A recent book by the former Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee claims that Apple in China and Foxconn in particular has grown because American investors and engineers have helped. It is not a surprise. Any industrial energy trains its competitors and successors. This is what Great Britain has done for centuries ago. The financiers, engineers and suppliers who make up an existing production ecosystem must be arranged and able to cooperate in the creation of a new one. They are generally well rewarded for this.
Apple contractors and components suppliers, large and small, in China could be willing to create a shop in India – after all, profits are profits wherever they are earned. Some of their engineers may be happy to move to supervise new floors in the shop.
But apparently, Beijing may not allow this to happen. Many crucial and expert employees found themselves forbidden to go to India and in the South -East Asia. Apple and Nuova Delhi both tried to court Trump and to make him accept the possibility that the iPhones intended for the United States are made in India. But it seems that they may also need to woo President Xi Jinping.
Objectively, the ecosystem of cell phones guided apple in India is not at all almost demanding to challenge China’s manufacturing domain. After all, China is the indispensable country not only for Apple, but for several companies that fight to move production to India, Vietnam and elsewhere. But Beijing now seems to see Apple’s India’s project as a risk – dangerous enough to be able to erect some barriers on his path. Trump, Apple, Nuova Delhi and Beijing seem agreed on the potential of Indian production in the coming years, whatever the rest of us can think.
