Apple wants a quarter of its products manufactured in India, claims minister

India is responsible for five to seven percent of Apple's manufacturing, and the iPhone maker aims to grow that number to 25 percent, according to India's minister of commerce and industry, Piyush Goyal. Speaking on Monday at the inaugural session of the B20 India Inception – a part of the G20 dialog – Goyal called Apple a " …

[Anonymous Coward]

“We don’t have opaque business models, we don’t have hidden subsidies, we don’t have anything done in the government which is not known to the public at large,”

And for God's sake, stop sniggering down the back Patel.

[MyffyW]

India does at least have a lively free press

[What BBC documentary?]

[NoneSuch]

China cannot invade Taiwan easily. However, India is right on their border and there's already been a few dust ups in recent memory.

Just look at Tibet. If China feels India will become an economic threat then they will cram a few million troops over the border to sort it out.

[DS999]

"Manufacturing" in India is the tip of the iceberg

They are talking about final assembly, which is taking all the parts and putting them together into a finished phone. But the second tier suppliers who supply many of those parts and materials, and the third tier suppliers who supply parts and materials used by second tier suppliers will remain in China, because not just Apple but most of the western world quit doing a lot of that stuff themselves because China could do it cheaper.

If there was ever a full trade embargo from China pretty much zero US or EU companies could ship any physical product. Of course China can't do that because that would devastate their economy and if they had riots over covid restrictions they would have revolution over their economy cratering overnight. But the idea that Apple assembling phones in India instead of China, or any western company "manufacturing" its products in its home country, frees them from future trade or supply issues with China is naive to the extreme.

It is good that India wants to move down that value chain and do more than just assemble products, but it took China decades to build up that capability. It would take India takes to do likewise, and meanwhile western countries who are beginning to wake up the strategic risk of being held hostage by supply chains in the event of a major war will be trying to cherry pick some of those capabilities deemed important for the defense industry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Manufacturing" in India is the tip of the iceberg

China uses a bunch of non-tariff barriers to make it easier to do the whole job in China.

We made our key component in a backwater well away from China, and there were a lot of small difficulties thrown up at the border to try and just make it a lot simpler to do it all in-country.

Then when there were actual CN customers (rather than TW and US principals) they flat refused to buy non-CN components (and freely admitted it was because of government local content requirements that meant if it had an offshore cpu, everything else needed to be CN).

Moving final assembly out of China, frees you to move other components out of China too.

Some of those components are things you might prefer to make somewhere else, not necessarily India, that will probably end up being much like CN business wise.

(This is not about active dishonesty. There are simply too far many people and businesses in your line of business and too much staff turnover, to expect to keep any trade secrets for long.)

[Aitor 1]

Re: "Manufacturing" in India is the tip of the iceberg

As a Chinese customer I would also prefer all made in China, as they don't know what sanctions from the US will come next, it is unsafe otherwise.

I assume you moved your operation somewhere else..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Manufacturing" in India is the tip of the iceberg

Hu was still running CN then, and there was no trade war.

At the time, Foxconns extreme cosiness in CN, was making a soft economic anschluss of TW and CN seem the likely future.

[jmch]

cost, cost, cost...

"The minister attributed interest from Apple and other manufacturers to India's transparent rule of law."

My guess is that it's all about cost. As China has grown massively in the last 15 years, costs there have also shot up relative to India and other countries in SE Asia. China is no longer a 'low-cost' manufacturing hub, just lower-cost than EU and US with high level of expertise. And Apple wants to cling on to it's massive margins.

[elsergiovolador]

UK

Why not in the UK?

Oh we know why.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: UK

Indeed.

The UK government is reaping the fruits of the Brexit dividend and is leading the G7 in growth, with more to come when the FTZs come online.

[Potemkine!]

As China's GDP is rising, companies are following the path of the "poorer one" to maximize their profit. There must be a Law of Acquisition to describe this.

[hoola]

Which is worse?

I am not sure there really is that much difference between manufacturing (assembling) in China or India currently. Both appear to be more closely aligned with Russian than their largest export customer bases.

Are working conditions that much better (or worse) in one than the other?

As another post eludes to, it is far more likely to be following the paths of:

Who is offering the incentives/subsidies/bribes

Where the cheapest labour is

Where the political situation favours investment because it is seen as "better".

The only thing you can say is India is probably a bit ahead of Africa at the moment in stability and resources.

Labour is one of the key costs and following the path where it is cheapest will always be on the cards for companies that outsource everything. Along with that cheap labour comes all the other hidden issues such as non-existent H&S, poor environmental controls, iffy working conditions. These assembly plants make look hi-tech but that is easy, how the workforce is treated and exists is another matter entirely.

At the end of the day it comes down to profit.