Foxconn invests billions in India as it preps for recovery
AirPods will be made in India from around December 2024, reports claim
More news in India where Apple partner Foxconn has confirmed plans to invest billions of dollars in manufacturing even as reports claim it will soon begin churning out AirPods in the country.
Billions to invest in India
During an earnings call Foxconn Chairman Young Liu earlier this week confirmed plans to invest billions in India, despite recently exiting a scheme to make processors in the nation.
Foxconn now has over 30 factories in India and employs tens of thousands of workers, many within the rapidly growing Apple supply chain there.
Foxconn continues to expand its Apple operations.
This week we learned the company has approved a $400 million investment in an AirPods production plant in Hyderabad. The plant is expected to enter production in December 2024. That’s on top of the huge billion dollar investment we learned about last month.
“Foxconn Hyderabad factory will make AirPods. The factory is expected to begin mass production by December,” a source told PTI.
Why is this significant?
It matters because until now Apple/its supply chain doesn’t seem to have begun manufacturing any of its products with the exception of iPhones in India.
Given that India’s government is pushing for Apple to expand production in India, including the recent decision to shove huge tariffs on Macs, this may be of interest down the line. And plans to expand production on the part of Apple may have helped convince India to back down a little.
Back to the iStone age
Foxconn’s parent company Hon Hai says it expects iPhone and other smartphone sales to contract overall in 2023, following its latest earnings report.
That makes sense given the overall contraction in everything and the end time we see for capitalism on a wider basis, but even once humans do manage to reinvent for a post growth society, we’ll probably still use iPhones. So, on an optimistic note, the downturn now will be followed by some kind of upswing somewhere down the line, though it’s hard to predict when or how.
“We forecast India’s smartphone market growing 3x over the next decade… accounting for 100% of global smartphone growth through 2032,” one analyst predicts.
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