Apple will be manufacturing its new flagship smartphone in India, the US tech giant confirmed on Monday, as it seeks to diversify production away from a dependence on China.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the iPhone supply chain is mainly based in China but the country’s zero-Covid policies and tensions with the United States have hurt production, analysts say.
‘We’re excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India,’ Apple said in a brief statement which was released on Tuesday.
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The California-based firm already makes older iPhone models in India via Taiwanese manufacturers such as Foxconn, which has a factory in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The latest announcement comes just weeks after Apple launched new smartphones. The tech behemoth is commencing production of the iPhone 14 in India much earlier than it did for previous models, Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said.
‘Over the last couple of years, it has been increasingly diversifying its supply chain to India,’ Chaurasia told reporters.
About 7.5 million iPhones — around three percent of Apple’s global production — were made in India last year, the analyst added.
‘We expect that the local production of iPhones could reach more than 11 million this year,’ he said.
Apple’s announcement will be a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ strategy under which he has urged foreign businesses to manufacture goods in the South Asian nation.
In another report, a consumer rights champion last Thursday slammed a £750 million (878 million euros, $918 million) lawsuit on Apple in Britain after a claim that accused the US tech giant of secretly slowing down older iPhone models.
Justin Gutmann revealed that Apple ‘throttled’ the performance of older iPhone handsets after users installed upgrades that they were told would improve the performance of their device.
He claims Apple never told users that the update could slow their device and that the tool was introduced to mask the inability of older iPhone batteries to cope with the demands of newer operating systems.
In her defense, Apple said in a statement that ‘we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.