Slashdot Mirror
Mass Production of iPhones To Start In India
Apple is poised to begin mass production of iPhones in India this year, according to Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou. This marks a big shift for the largest assembler of Apple's handsets that has long concentrated production in China. Bloomberg reports: Gou said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited him to India as his Taiwanese company plans its expansion in the country. Apple has had older phones produced at a plant in Bangalore for several years, but now will expand manufacturing to more recent models. Bloomberg News reported this month that Foxconn is ready to start trial production of the latest iPhones in the country before it starts full-scale assembly at its factory outside the southern city of Chennai.
India has become the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, while China stagnates and Apple loses share to local competitors such as Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. Apple has been a minor player in India, in part because of its high prices, but local manufacturing would help the Cupertino, California-based company avoid import duties of 20 percent. It's not yet clear how Apple's steps into India will affect its China operations. China has been the company's most important manufacturing base for years, home to Foxconn's biggest facilities and hundreds of other partners.
India has become the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, while China stagnates and Apple loses share to local competitors such as Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. Apple has been a minor player in India, in part because of its high prices, but local manufacturing would help the Cupertino, California-based company avoid import duties of 20 percent. It's not yet clear how Apple's steps into India will affect its China operations. China has been the company's most important manufacturing base for years, home to Foxconn's biggest facilities and hundreds of other partners.
A chinese friend recently complained to me that while life in china has gotten good, and wages not that far from what he was making when he was working in spain, so has the rent, cost of living etc and now manufacturers are picking up and moving to factories in India, the Philipines and Africa.
Welcome to the first world China. Might I suggest leaning on your government to get some sort of welfare thing going, now that you've made it, all the jobs are going bye bye.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
2/3 of China is below the poverty line
You can be forgiven for thinking that, because it was not that long ago what you say was true and you don't get a lot of news about China in the mainstream press.
But these days the poverty rate has been driven to 3.1 percent, because China has been working really hard to live the very poorest out of poverty.
Now China is of course known to cook some books, but even with that factored in they are far from having 2/3 of China below the poverty line these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That will certainly incentivize their largest market - US consumers - to buy products from India instead of China.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This is not new. Entire industries have been slowly moving to lower labor cost or lower political risk countries for many years. I've been in the consumer electronics business, watching the labor cost in China rise and rise for over 20yrs. It's not politics or conspiracy - just a natural economic rebalancing. China has entered "interesting" times... It will be interesting to see how well the people tolerate the totalitarian assholes when the economy collapses.
We know for sure it isn't toilets or sanitation products.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Don't believe the hype. Real GDP in China is negative. The 6% number is completely fabricated by the government, mostly based on heavily manipulated government investment and real estate. I have lived in China about half of the time for the last 20yrs. Many of our suppliers have closed or collapsed and reformed into different industries to try to survive. Our country (USA) has a real economy and freedoms the people of China are still dreaming of.
They have definitely inflated some numbers to make things look more enticing to foreign investors, but the reality is definitely growth, and not contraction. All the cargo-cult stuff going on in China to game the system - the building of empty high-rises, hiring whiteface performers to make your company seem Western - all of that falseness has been declining the last few years.
They inflated the GDP to get capitalists to send foreign money into China. It worked like a charm, kickstarted their economy, and established probably the world's biggest manufacturing base. Now that that process is nearing completion, you might see a few factories move around at the margins, but that doesn't change the tide. Apple's move in particular is more about what's going on in India, not China. They want to be sure as Indians buy their first smartphone, that they have cheap iPhones available to lock them in. Unless your first phone is an iPhone, there isn't much incentive to switch to Apple later.
The trade deficit is not domestic China GDP. I am in China and know what I see from my suppliers, about half of which have collapsed over the last 5yrs. You think you know what is going on, but you are just quoting what you read from the news media.
India has been making and launching satellites for donkey years now. India even had a Nokia factory(when Nokia phones were was selling)which made 300,000 phones per day.India has tech centers of all high tech companies where lots of vlsi design is done. India recently successfully tested an anti satillite missile.All global auto makers have indian plants which make decent cars. India has a middle class whose size is more than the population of USA
This production is for the Indian Market not for export. Indian govt was getting worried as it has a large trade deficit and the largest item on it is electronics (even more than oil) so they were pushing manufacturers to manufacture in India instead of importing fully built units. Parts will still come from Japan, China,USA,Korea, Taiwan and UK as for other iPhones but having it being manufactured in India does reduce the import bill substantially. As a plus side if Apple wants to set up Apple stores in India , 51% of the goods sold in those stores need to be made in India (thats the standard rule for single brand retail in India) and having Indian made iPhones makes it easy to hit that %age
**Life is too short to be serious**