Apple ramped up iPhone manufacturing in India by roughly 53% last year, assembling about 55 million units in 2025—up from 36 million in 2024—as the company deepened its pivot away from China amid persistent US tariff pressures, Bloomberg reports. India now accounts for about 25% of Apple’s total global iPhone output, which stands at roughly 220–230 million units annually. The share has climbed rapidly over the past three years, driven by a combination of geopolitical tensions, punitive US levies on Chinese goods, and production-linked incentives offered by the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s manufacturing push.Apple now builds every iPhone 17 variant in India—including Pro and Pro MaxFor the first time, Apple is assembling its entire current iPhone 17 lineup in India, including the premium Pro and Pro Max models. Previously, India-made iPhones were limited to older or mid-tier variants, with the high-end models reserved for Chinese factories. The shift marks a significant milestone in Apple’s supply chain diversification strategy.
Apple’s key suppliers in India—Foxconn, Tata Electronics, and Pegatron—also continue to build older models like the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 for both domestic sales and exports. Tata Group, in particular, has emerged as a major player, with its plants expected to account for up to half of India’s iPhone output over the next two years, according to earlier Bloomberg reporting.India overtook China as the top source of US-bound smartphones in mid-2025The production surge has had a dramatic effect on trade flows. India overtook China in the April–June 2025 quarter to become the largest source of smartphones shipped to the US for the first time, capturing 44% of the market, according to Canalys data. China’s share fell from over 60% a year earlier to just 25%.Foxconn’s India operations alone shipped $4.4 billion worth of iPhones to the US in the first five months of 2025—more than the $3.7 billion it shipped in all of 2024, per Reuters. Apple even chartered cargo flights in March 2025 to airlift roughly $2 billion worth of iPhones from Chennai to beat looming tariff deadlines.New subsidies, tax wins, and chipmaker talks signal India’s growing role beyond assemblyIndia’s role in Apple’s supply chain is expanding beyond final assembly. In the 2026–27 Union Budget, the government introduced a five-year income tax exemption allowing foreign companies like Apple to provide manufacturing equipment to Indian contract manufacturers without triggering tax liabilities—a policy change Apple had actively lobbied for, Reuters reported.Apple is also in early talks with Indian chipmakers, including Murugappa Group-owned CG Semi, to assemble and package display chips at a facility in Gujarat—its first such effort in India.Despite the progress, India still faces cost disadvantages compared to China and Vietnam. Apple and its suppliers are in discussions with the government for a fresh round of incentives, with current production subsidies set to expire on March 31, 2026.
