In a bid to reduce its reliance on China as a base for operations, Apple could be planning to produce up to $40 billion worth of smartphones in India through contract manufacturers Wistron and Foxconn, reports The Indian Economic Times.
Several meetings between Apple's senior executives and top ranking government officials over the last few months have paved the way for the iPhone maker examining the possibility of shifting nearly a fifth of its production capacity from China to India and scaling up its local manufacturing revenues, through its contract manufacturers, to around $40 billion over the next five years, say officials familiar with the matter.
A senior government official told ET the decision is being linked to India's production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, which was introduced to boost local manufacturing of electrical products, particularly smartphones.
A company must manufacture at least $10 billion worth of mobile phones in a phased manner between 2020 and 2025 to benefit from the PLI scheme and are required to meet target on a yearly basis.
Currently, Apple sells $1.5 billion of phones in India, but less than $0.5 billion of those are locally manufactured. In contrast, in 2018-2019 Apple produced $220 billion worth of products in China.
According to ET, government officials are willing to look into concerns that Apple hs with the PLI scheme, including how it values plant and machinery already in use in China, and the extent of the business information required under the scheme.
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Top Rated Comments
And I really wish they'd move ALL of it out of China.
It's funny, I remember when 'business' meant helping your employees to have a better life. Employers cared about the people they employed. When a business announced massive layoffs, their stock took a hit. Back then, that meant the company was struggling, back then it meant that the end could be near. Then something changed. I remember watching CNBC, and major corporations announced massive job cuts, and their stock went up. Investors knew those jobs were going to China, or elsewhere, and the corporation would start reaping higher profits. The products didn't get better, the production of them got drastically cheaper. To go from a high labor cost to an almost literally zero labor cost is why these corporations were making huge profits, and the investor class lined up at the capital gains trough. My company used to sell to the residential market, and that ended. We sold to the business market and that ended too. Clients and customers went bankrupt because of the drive for profit.
Profit above all is evil. Profit above all is inhumane. Corporations were not started to enrich the investors, they were started to enrich the workers, and the areas they were located. Things changed, and not for the better. But, by all means, keep trying to lecture me on 'business'. This could prove humorous...