iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
In a major win for the govt’s Aatamnirbhar India initiative, Apple has started manufacturing of one of its flagship devices, the iPhone 11, at Chennai’s Foxconn plant. This is the first time Apple has manufactured a top-of-the-line model in India.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal announced the news on Twitter on Friday. Goyal wrote, “Significant boost to Make in India! Apple has started manufacturing iPhone 11 in India, bringing a top-of-the-line model for the first time in the country.”
Prior to this, the Cupertino-based tech giant had started assembling the iPhone XR in India in 2019. In 2017, Apple had started the domestic manufacturing of the Apple iPhone SE 2016 in the Bangalore plant.
Apple also has plans to make the iPhone SE 2020 in India in its Wistron plant near Bangalore.
Earlier this month, Foxconn, which is a leading supplier for Apple has planned to invest up to $1 billion to expand its India factory where it assembles iPhone models. Pegatron — the second-largest iPhone assembler after Foxconn — was also reported to make some investment in the country and set up a local subsidiary in the coming future.
However, there is no price cut and the MRP on locally assembled iPhone 11 remains the same as earlier.
It may be recalled that in June 2020, the government began inviting applications for Rs 50,000 crore inventive schemes to attract global mobile device makers and boost local companies for electronics manufacturing. IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said India will initially aim to attract top 5 global mobile manufacturing companies and also promote five local companies that will be identified through a screening process.
The minister said that if India has become the second-largest mobile manufacturing country in the world, and now working to lead the segment globally.
The government had notified three schemes on April 1 for the promotion of electronics. These were schemes for manufacturing of electronic components and semiconductors, modified electronics manufacturing clusters (EMC 2.0) scheme, and production linked incentive scheme for large scale electronics manufacturing.
Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said global mobile majors will come to India in next 2-3 years, and the country will soon become number one in the segment.
