After Foxconn started making the latest iPhone 14 in September in India, another Apple supplier has begun assembling the model in the country. Pegatron Corp has become the second Apple supplier in India to make the iPhone 14 in India and plans to invest Rs 1,132 crore between FY23 and FY25 under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for smartphones.
The Taiwanese contract manufacturer Pegatron along with other contract manufacturers of Apple — Foxconn and Wistron — are in an expansion mode in India as the US tech major plans to reduce dependence its on China.
Pegatron will be participating for only four years since the company entered a year late while Foxconn and Wistron for five years, according to a report in Economic Times.
It is worth mentioning here that Foxconn’s plant in China’s Zhengzhou – the largest facility for iPhones in the world – has been under Covid-19 lockdown for the past few days. The company started making iPhone 14 in India in less than a fortnight of the launch of the phone.
Pegatron, which signed an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government in 2021, has invested Rs 1,100 crore in the new factory which was operationalised on September 30, 2022. It started assembling iPhones in April this year with iPhone 12. The Pegatron factory has a workforce of 7,000+ people.
After Pegatron’s entry in India to make the iPhone 14, noted Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo on Friday tweeted that Foxconn will accelerate the expansion of capacity at its India plant. “As a result, iPhones made by Foxconn in India will grow by at least 150 per cent on-year in 2023, and the medium/long-term goal is to ship 40-45 per cent of iPhones from India (versus the current 2-4 per cent).”
PLI scheme for smartphones
Global companies are required to make a cumulative minimum investment of Rs 1,000 crore over four years and are not required to make an investment in the last year, state the guidelines for smartphone PLI scheme. Pegatron will be making investment in the first three years as it is taking incentives for only four years under the scheme.
The PLI scheme for smartphones launched in 2020 was aimed at weaning away manufacturers from dominant geographies such as China and Vietnam. It is worthwhile to note that our monthly mobile phone exports touched the $1-billion mark (over Rs 8,200 crore) for the first time ever in September, led by Apple and Samsung.
