- It’s official: for the first time, iPhones will be assembled by an Indian company.
- Wistron is selling its Indian manufacturing plant and business to Tata Electronics.
- The development also came at an apt time as Indian Mobile Congress 2023 was inaugurated today by PM Narendra Modi.
Taiwanese firms Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron have been manufacturing iPhones in India since 2016. In a major new development, one of these companies is giving up their Indian operations in the hands of Tata Group. This will be the first time an Indian company will be assembling iPhones.
Over time, reports had indicated that Apple contract manufacturer Wistron’s India business would fall in Tata’s hands, and today, it was made official by India’s IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
Wistron hands over iPhone manufacturing business to Tata Group in India
Wistron was the first to set up an iPhone assembly line in India and helped push out the iPhone SE ‘Made in India’ model to the domestic market in 2016. This plant is located in Karnataka, near the state capital city of Bengaluru. Rumours of Wistron winding down operations in the country have been floating since early this year.
In a statement, today, also shared by the government of India’s Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Wistron confirmed selling its India manufacturing plant and division to Tata Electronics for a tentative price of USD 125 million (around Rs. 124.9 crores). He noted that the development is a “significant achievement” whilst thanking Wistron and Apple for their contributions.
This deal allows Tata to become the first Indian company to manufacture iPhones. These iPhones, assembled in India, are also exported to major markets for Apple. In fact, for the first time, Apple assembled its latest model, the iPhone 15 in India at launch. This was not the case for previous models which came out of Apple’s China factories for the first few months of launch.
