Apple’s India move: a strategic pivot with rising production and operational challenges

Apple has shifted a quarter of its iPhone assembly to India, marking a significant change in global supply chain dynamics amid geopolitical and operational challenges, according to Bloomberg.

Apple’s manufacturing shift to India is no longer a side project. Bloomberg said the country now produces all of the company’s latest iPhone models, marking a decisive break from the long-standing assumption that China would remain the main centre of assembly.

The change has accelerated sharply over the past year. Bloomberg reported in March that Apple assembled about 55 million iPhones in India in 2025, a rise of roughly 53% from the year before and enough to account for about a quarter of global output. That expansion reflects Apple’s effort to reduce exposure to US-China trade tensions and tariffs, while also taking advantage of India’s production-linked incentive scheme, which is designed to draw more electronics manufacturing into the country.

The scale of the move highlights how much Apple’s supply chain has evolved. MacRumors and TechCrunch both reported that India’s share of iPhone assembly has climbed to around 25%, underscoring the company’s broader push to diversify production away from a single country. The strategy is not without cost: Bloomberg and Investing.com noted that manufacturing in India remains more expensive than in China, but Apple appears willing to accept that trade-off in exchange for greater resilience.

India’s growing role is also visible on the ground. Time reported that a recently expanded Foxconn plant in Sriperumbudur has become one of Apple’s key assembly sites outside China, employing about 17,000 workers and targeting annual output of 20 million iPhones. The same report said the site has also faced scrutiny over labour rights and safety, a reminder that scaling production in India brings operational and reputational challenges as well as strategic benefits.