Apple's 25% Indian iPhone manufacturing target could make your next one much easier to buy

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Apple is reportedly keen to have around a quarter of its iPhones built in India in a move that would greatly increase the number of devices built in the country.

Apple is reportedly in the middle of plans to move some manufacturing away from China in an attempt to reduce its reliance on the country that has struggled for consistency in recent years. Ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns and worker unrest have impacted the production of Apple’s best iPhone of late, leading to global shortages.

By moving manufacturing to India, it’s thought that Apple will ensure that Chinese uncertainty will not have such a large impact on production moving forward, with one report suggesting that the target for Indian iPhone production sits at 25%. It currently builds between 5% and 7% of all iPhones in the country.

 “Apple, another success story” 

Reuters reports that Indian minister Piyush Goyal believes that Apple intends to massively increase its manufacturing in the country. "They are already at about 5-7% of their manufacturing in India,” he’s reported as saying. “If I am not mistaken, they are targeting to go up to 25% of their manufacturing.”

It isn’t clear when Apple hopes to be able to reach such a lofty goal, however, but it’s increasingly clear that China’s loss will be India’s gain.

Apple’s reliance on China was brought into sharp relief towards the end of 2022. Issues at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant meant that global iPhone 14 Pro supplies were crippled, with Apple confirming that buyers would struggle to get their hands on the phone as a result. 

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.