Foxconn India Head: "A Bigger Gift to India Next Year"
Foxconn, Apple's largest partner, will double its investment and employment in India. As geopolitical tensions between the US and China escalate and business risks in China increase, Apple appears to be accelerating its decoupling from China.
According to Bloomberg on the 18th, V. Li, Foxconn's India representative, posted on LinkedIn the day before to celebrate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday, announcing plans to double the scale of its business in India. He said, "We aim to double employment, foreign direct investment (FDI), and business scale within India," adding, "We will work hard to give an even bigger birthday gift next year."
Foxconn is currently investing $1.2 billion (approximately 1.59 trillion won) to build factories in Bengaluru and other locations in India. The factory being built near Bengaluru Airport is expected to produce iPhones after completion and is anticipated to create over 100,000 jobs.
Bloomberg pointed out that Foxconn's expansion of factories in India shows the rapid decline of China's role as the "world's factory." Major global companies, including Apple, are moving their production bases from China to countries like Vietnam and India.
In particular, Apple is known to have actively considered reorganizing its global supply chain after significant disruptions in iPhone production last year due to the spread of COVID-19, lockdown measures by the Chinese government, and mass departures of Chinese factory workers. The large growth potential of the Indian smartphone market is also cited as a reason why Apple is focusing on India's role as a major production base. Foxconn already operates 30 factories across 9 sites in India, employing tens of thousands of workers. Foxconn Chairman Liu Yangwei also indicated that "additional expansion of production bases in India is currently in the early stages," suggesting that the company will continue to expand its factories in India.
The intensifying friction between the US and China and the growing anti-American sentiment within China are also influencing Apple's move away from China. The Chinese government recently issued a ban on iPhone use for civil servants in central government agencies. This is a retaliatory measure against Apple, a US company, in response to US semiconductor equipment export controls. Recently, Chinese company Huawei launched the 'Mate 60 Pro' smartphone equipped with a self-developed 7-nanometer (nm, one billionth of a meter) chip on the 12th, ahead of the iPhone 15 unveiling, and has been heavily promoting it to encourage patriotic consumption among Chinese citizens.
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