Chennai

Apple plans to increase production in a phased manner by shipping the phones that are assembled in Chennai to other markets.

In a tweet, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal announced Apple’s manufacturing intent in India. “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,” he posted. Currently, iPhone XR and iPhone 11 are being assembled by Foxconn at its Chennai plant, while iPhone 7 is assembled by Wistron in Bengaluru.

Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, a leading assembler for Apple, has been allocated 30 acres out of Finnish Nokia’s 210-acre land parcel in the Nokia telecom cluster at Oragadam. Foxconn has also got 150-acres in the Sipcot Electronics Hardware SEZ facility at Sriperumbudur. Apple started production in February this year, in Chennai. “The trial production exercise started but due to COVID-19, operations came to a halt. However, production has now resumed,” said a source. When contacted, a top official of Foxconn did not comment.

Assembling the iPhones under the ‘Make in India’ initiative will help the company avoid the 22% tax on its imported phones, however, trade sources say there is no price reduction and the MRP on locally assembled iPhone 11s.

CHINESE HANDSET BRANDS’ MARKET SHARE SLIPS IN INDIA

• Chinese smartphone brands saw their market share in India fall to 72% in June quarter from 81% in the preceding three months due to COVID-19 supply chain disruption and growing anti-China sentiment, Counterpoint Research said
• Brands like Oppo, Vivo and Realme had a commanding market but their share declined during April-June 
• Xiaomi led the tally with 29% of the smartphone market, followed by Samsung (26%), Vivo (17%), Realme (11%), Oppo (9%) and others (8%) in the June quarter 
• This has also given brands like Samsung, Micromax and Lava, a chance to recapture market share 
• In the March quarter, Xiaomi had 30%, Vivo had 17%, Realme 14% and Oppo 12% of the market share 

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