- The iPhone manufacturing unit, which is currently being built in Hosur in Tamil Nadu, will employ 60,000 workers.
- 6,000 tribal women from areas around Ranchi and Hazaribagh have received training to make iPhones.
- The move will be a major boost to the “Make in India” initiative.
India is getting ready to manufacture more iPhones as Apple’s largest iPhone manufacturing facility in India is being built in Hosur, around 40 kms from Bengaluru, according to Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The plant will employ as many as 60,000 workers, with Vaishnaw adding that 6,000 tribal women from areas near Ranchi and Hazaribagh have received training to make iPhones.
Tata Electronics, which has a facility in Hosur, has been selected by Apple to manufacture iPhone enclosures. Tata has reportedly roped in an iPhone manufacturer for the facility; which one, is unclear at the moment. Tech behemoths Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron currently manufacture Apple iPhones in India.
According to Tata Electronics website, the project will be focused on manufacturing precision components. They also target employing 85 percent women in their workforce through this project.
Apple to focus more on iPhone manufacturing in India
The news comes after Reuters reported that Foxconn plans to at least quadruple the size of its operations in India over the next two years. Notably, the largest iPhone manufacturing facility in the world, Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant in China, was recently placed under a COVID-19 lockdown earlier this month, which all the more forces Apple to focus more on its manufacturing operations elsewhere.
Citing sources, the report said Taiwan-based Foxconn intends to increase the workforce at its facility in southern India to 70,000 by hiring 53,000 more workers over the course of the next two years. Compared to their facility in Zhengzhou, Foxconn’s Tamil Nadu plant is considerably smaller.
Apple’s India operations have seen an exponential growth, with the company expected to export made-in-India worth Rs 2,500 crore by March 2023, double of what was exported last year. Apple earlier did not intend to manufacture the iPhone 14 in India, but it preponed its plans by two months and started making the vanilla model of its latest series in the country in September.
Apple recently unveiled its much anticipated iPhone 14 lineup, which consists of four iPhones – iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
