Apple to make iPhones in Bengaluru via Wistron: report

Apple Inc plans to start making iPhones for the Indian market in Bengaluru from April next year. Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker for Apple, is setting up a facility in Peenya, the city's industrial hub, to manufacture the iPhones, according to a Times of India report.

Top sources in the company confirmed to TOI that Apple is "very serious" about beginning assembly operations - and thereafter full manufacture - in India by the end of next year. "Bangalore is being looked at seriously," said multiple sources within the company. Local manufacture will help Apple price its phones competitively as full imports attract 12.5 per cent additional duty.

An email sent to Apple didn't elicit a response.

Foxconn, Apple's largest Taiwan-based OEM, earlier committed to setting up a manufacturing plant in Maharashtra. The assumption was the plant would make only Apple products. But sources say Foxconn has tied up with other players like Xiaomi and OnePlus for local manufacture and not necessarily to only make Apple products there.

This will be Apple's second big announcement for Bengaluru. In May, Apple announced a design and development accelerator in the city to grow the iOS developer community and also to guide Indian developers to leverage Apple's programming language Swift and build apps for Apple TV and Apple Watch. The facility will open early next year.

The Bengaluru manufacturing facility underscores India's importance for the Cupertino-based company, the TOI report points out. Apple chief executive Tim Cook's multi-city India tour earlier this year signalled the growing importance of India powered by the demand for Apple products by a burgeoning middle class. Data from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research showed that Apple sold 2.5 million iPhones in India from October 2015 to September 2016, a rise of more than 50 per cent over the year-ago period.

Apple India clocked robust sales touching Rs9,997 crore in the 2016 financial year, up 56 per cent from Rs6,472 crore previously. The company's net profit grew 21 per cent to Rs294 crore during the same period with deeper retail penetration and lower prices for older iPhone models that garnered a huge user base.

Apple has published job openings on its portal for a few positions at its OEM's factory in Bengaluru like operations program manager and product quality manager.