Apple has announced plans to shift all the assembly plants for US-sold Iphones to India as soon as next year, following President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.
This is a part of Apple’s strategy to diversify its supply chain with the goal being to source the more than 60 million iPhones sold annually in the US from India by the end of 2026. This target would mean doubling the iPhone output in India, after almost two decades in which Apple spent heavily in China to create a world-beating production line that powered its rise into a $3tn tech giant.
This comes in the wake of Trump’s tariff announcements, which wiped $700bn from Apple’s market value and forced the company to export all available Indian-manufactured iPhones to the US to avoid the higher tariffs imposed on China.
Though it still assembles most of its smartphones in China, Apple has in recent years been steadily building capacity in India with contract manufacturers Tata Electronics and Foxconn.
Iphone Assembly Process
iPhone assembly is the last step in the production process, bringing together hundreds of components for which Apple is still heavily reliant on Chinese suppliers. Apple devices entering the US are still subject to a separate 20 percent tariff that applies to all imports from China while India was hit with a so-called reciprocal tariff of 26 percent, though this is paused while New Delhi pushes for a bilateral trade agreement with the US.
The US is a major market for Apple phones and accounted for about 28 percent of Apple’s 232.1m global iPhone shipments in 2024, according to the International Data Corporation which means Apple would need to further increase capacity in India to fulfil all US orders.
Last year, Foxconn and Tata started importing pre-assembled component sets from China so as to help it fill in the gap left by China in trying to fulfil the US market’s Iphone demands.
