Apple and, in fact, many western manufacturers are increasingly uncomfortable with their heavy dependence on CCP=-controlled China, especially after its uncompromising and unpredictable “Zero COVID” nonsense over the past year plus.
Megha Mandavia for The Wall Street Journal:
Violent protests at Apple supplier Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory in November further highlighted the risks of an overly concentrated supply chain.
India, on the other hand, is slated to play a larger role—at least for Apple. Despite its creaky infrastructure and still-frustrating bureaucracy, India’s substantial domestic market and newly robust government support for electronics manufacturing make it well placed to take advantage of a “China plus one” manufacturing strategy.
Apple already assembles the iPhone 11, 12, 13 and 14 in India through three Taiwanese companies— Wistron, Foxconn and Pegatron. And thanks to new iPhone designs that are more modular, plants in India can now produce the iPhone 14 almost simultaneously with plants in China, according to Counterpoint Research. The research firm thinks 18% to 20% of all iPhones globally will be made in India by 2025—up from only around 3% in 2021.
MacDailyNews Take: Vietnam is another point of diversification, but with a much smaller potential labor force than India can offer.
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