iPhone 14 supply could stabilize as production moves away from COVID-hit China

iPhone 14 Review
(Image credit: iMore / Stephen Warwick)

Pegatron, one of Apple's manufacturing partners, has reportedly begun building iPhone 14 handsets in India.

The news comes amid ongoing Chinese tensions as well as a new lockdown that has seen the world's biggest iPhone factory impacted by COVID-19 this week.

Apple has long been reported to want to move some manufacturing capacity beyond Chinese borders in an attempt to reduce its over-reliance on the country. The COVID-19 pandemic showed how much Apple needed Chinese manufacturing, with lockdowns across the country impacting its ability to put iPhones and other products onto store shelves.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Pegatron has begun iPhone manufacturing in India. The company is the second to start building the iPhone 14 in the country.

Diversification

Foxconn has already been building iPhone 14 models in India for a couple of months now, but the majority of iPhones are still built by its Chinese facilities. The Zhengzhou plant is the biggest source of iPhones on the planet and Foxconn maintains that production is on track despite the recent COVID-19 activity in the area.

While Apple may have Foxconn and Pegatron assembling devices in India, most of the components they use are actually built in China. The iPhone 14 Pro is also exclusively assembled by Foxconn in China and it's the Pro devices whose supply remains the most constricted today — six weeks after the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max first went on sale.

It isn't just iPhones that have proven difficult to get into the hands of anyone who wants to buy them, though. Apple's recently-released Apple Watch Ultra is also difficult to pick up, too. It's the best Apple Watch the company has ever made, thanks to a new rugged design, larger 49mm display, and lightweight construction.

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.