According to reports, Apple has told its component suppliers that it would rather purchase batteries from Indian manufacturers for the future iPhone 16. This is a change from Apple’s strong reliance on China and is consistent with the company’s growing emphasis on manufacturing operations in India. Apple now has a 5% market share in India, a percentage that may increase to 12% the following year.
This news comes a few days after the government declared that Indian producers of electronic parts, TDK Corp., will make lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery cells for Apple iPhones. TDK Corp. is a Japanese company. The move is expected to strengthen the nation’s mobile device manufacturing and the product linked incentive (PLI) program, potentially creating thousands of employment. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state minister for electronics and information technology, made the announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
According to Chandrasekhar, TDK plans to open a manufacturing plant in the northern Indian state of Haryana, creating thousands of new employment, as Reuters reported, citing Business Standard.
Based in Cupertino, California, Apple is positioning India as a growth engine to move some of its manufacturing out of China.
More recently, Apple has made a concerted effort to move a large amount of its manufacturing outside of China and diversify its supply chain.
According to government sources who spoke to PTI, iPhone manufacturer Apple intends to increase production in India by more than five times, to over $40 billion (almost 3.32 lakh crore), in the next four to five years.
The article claims that the company’s production exceeded $7 billion during the most recent fiscal year.
India plans to implement such regulations by June 2025, with the EU enforcing its charging port laws taking effect in December 2024. Apple urged officials to exempt current iPhone models from the regulation during a closed-door meeting chaired by the IT ministry on November 28, citing potential challenges in meeting production targets set under the nation’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, according to the Reuters report.
Apple’s product compliance and regulatory officials communicated that applying the rule to older phone models would make it more difficult for them to reach PLI goals. In the meeting, Apple did not, however, provide the precise production impact, and the IT ministry plans to review the request before reaching a conclusion.
Given that Apple has seen a notable increase in sales in India recently, the implementation of the universal charger requirement could provide a serious obstacle for the company. Prominent Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts that 12–14% of iPhone production in 2023 will come from India, the country that has emerged as Apple’s next major market after China. In the next year, he believes this percentage could rise to as high as 25%.
