Apple Begins iPhone 11 Production in India

Tech giant Apple’s contract manufacturer Foxconn has reportedly begun production of the company’s iPhone 11 lineup at its production plant near the southern city of Chennai in India.

TechCrunch reports that Apple’s contract manufacturing partner Foxconn has begun to assemble the company’s current iPhone 11 lineup at Foxconn’s production facility near the southern city of Chennai in India.

A small batch of iPhones has reportedly been shipped to local Indian retail outlets, but production is currently limited. Apple has plans to scale up its local production efforts in India, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.

Apple’s contract manufacturing partner, the Taiwan-based company Wistron, began assembling older iPhone models in 2017 but until recently Apple has not been able to have a manufacturing partner produce current-generation iPhones in India. Wistron has assembled iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7 models in its Bangalore plant and currently assembles iPhone XR units in India.

Piyush Goyal, India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, retweeted a tweet from Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Law & Justice, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology Minister of India, about Apple’s production of iPhones in the country.

2020 – iPhone 11
2019 – iPhone 7 & XR
2018 – iPhone 6S
2017 – iPhone SE
This chronology is a statement in itself as to how @narendramodi govt. has developed the mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem in India.
It's only a humble beginning. https://t.co/T1ssI1yG6K

— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) July 24, 2020

Assembling mobile handsets in India allows smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, to avoid almost 20 percent import duty that the Indian government levies on imported electronics. As a result, Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, Oppo, OnePlus and many other smartphone manufacturers have signed deals across India to produce their products locally.

Foxconn reportedly plans to invest $1 billion in its operations in India while New Delhi announced a $6.6 billion plan to attract smartphone manufacturers in June of this year.

Read at more at TechCrunch here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com