Foxconn Technology Group Chairman said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited him to India as his Taiwanese company plans its expansion in the country.
Foxconn
Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou said the iPhone will go into
mass production in India this year, a shift for the largest assembler
of Apple
Inc.’s handsets that has long concentrated production in
Gou
said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited him to India as
his Taiwanese company plans its expansion in the country. Apple has
had older phones produced at a plant in Bangalore for several years,
but now will expand manufacturing to more recent models. Bloomberg
News reported this month that Foxconn is ready to start trial
production of the latest iPhones in the country before it starts
full-scale assembly at its factory outside the southern city of
Chennai.
“In
the future we will play a very important role in India’s smartphone
industry,” Gou said at an event in Taiwan. “We have moved our
production lines there.”
India
has become the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, while
China stagnates and Apple loses share to local competitors such as
Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. Apple has been a minor
player in India, in part because of its high prices, but local
manufacturing would help the Cupertino, California-based company
avoid import duties of 20 per cent.
“For
Foxconn, the China market for iPhones
is saturated, and labor costs are three times higher compared with
India,” said Karn Chauhan, a Gurgaon-based analyst at Counterpoint
Research. “India is still an emerging smartphone market, it has a
lot of potential domestically and could serve as an export hub for
the region.”
Gou
also said on Monday that he plans to step back from daily operations
to focus on broader strategy. The founder isn’t stepping down or
relinquishing his chairmanship, said Louis Woo, special assistant to
Gou.
It’s
not yet clear how Apple’s steps into India will affect its China
operations. China has been the company’s most important
manufacturing base for years, home to Foxconn’s biggest facilities
and hundreds of other partners.
Foxconn
already has two assembly sites in the southern Indian states of
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where it makes devices for Xiaomi and
Nokia. Locating more production in India would help diversify Apple
and Foxconn’s manufacturing footprint away from China amid ongoing
trade tensions with the US.
