Apple’s Made-in-India Play Takes Centre Stage in iPhone 17 Roll-Out Plan

Apple’s main suppliers in India, Foxconn and Tata Electronics, are reportedly stepping on the accelerator to roll out the new iPhone 17 across their facilities in southern India. Earlier reports indicated that Foxconn’s Bengaluru plant and Tata’s Hosur unit had begun manufacturing the new iPhone models.

Now, new reports citing sources say that these two plants are “at full steam” both in terms of manpower capacity and production value. This is likely because they will lead new iPhone supplies to the US and Europe.

“The majority of iPhones sold in the US are now being made in India rather than China, and this shift is expected to create roughly a $1 billion headwind in the September quarter,” US-based brokerage firm Wedbush noted on Tuesday.

Adding that due to the complex tariff environment, Apple raised the price of the flagship iPhone 17 Pro to $1,099 (from $999) as it continues to focus on production in India. The base iPhone 17 remains priced at $799, while the new iPhone 17 Air (replacing the ‘Plus’ model) will cost $999 and the iPhone 16e will cost $599, with all base models now starting at 256GB of storage.

According to the Economic Times, Foxconn’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which operates on nearly 300 acres, began test production of the new iPhone model in April. The plant currently employs around 25,000 workers, but at full capacity, it can accommodate up to 100,000 employees.

Meanwhile, Moneycontrol reported that production at these factories will be scaled up further next week, driven by a surge in pre-orders from India, the US, and parts of Europe. They are also assembling earlier iPhone models, including the iPhone 14, iPhone 15, and iPhone 16.

India has rapidly emerged as a vital manufacturing hub for Apple. Almost half of the iPhones sold in the US now originate from India, and for the first time, India-made iPhones are available globally on launch day, no longer lagging behind Chinese shipments.

The impact is reflected in export data: smartphone shipments from India jumped 30% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 to 40 million units, largely driven by iPhones headed to the US, market research firms reported earlier. This surge followed Washington’s first-quarter tariff announcement, prompting Apple to accelerate shipments ahead of potential cost increases.

Over the past few years, Apple has worked to synchronise the launch of its latest iPhones from Indian factories with production in China. Last year, the Cupertino-based company released the iPhone 16 globally, with the Pro and Pro Max models reaching India just weeks after the worldwide launch.

This year, thanks to significant capacity expansion at Indian plants, all iPhone models — including the Pro and Pro Max — will be rolled out simultaneously from local factories to serve global markets.

Apple’s production surge also aligns with the government’s smartphone Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, introduced in 2021. The company’s suppliers now operate some of the largest manufacturing facilities in the country — not just in electronics, but across the broader industrial ecosystem.

In FY25, Apple’s vendors produced iPhones worth $22 billion (at factory price), with nearly 80% exported. Over the first four years of the PLI scheme, Apple and its vendors in India together produced more than $45 billion worth of iPhones, generating $34 billion in exports.

Yesterday, Apple launched four new iPhone models of its flagship brand. The iPhone 17 now features ProMotion with an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz, Ceramic Shield 2 with triple the scratch resistance, five colours (Lavender, Mist Blue, Black, White, and Sage), a 6.3-inch display, the new A19 chip built on 3nm technology, 3000 nits peak brightness, a 48MP fusion camera with four times the resolution of the iPhone 16.

The A19 chip includes a 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU that’s 20% faster than the A18, alongside a 16-core neural engine designed to drive on-device large language model (LLM) use. The newly designed iPhone 17 Pro introduces three new colours (Cosmic Orange, Deep Blue, and Silver), the A19 Pro chip, Ceramic Shield on both front and back, dual video recording, eSIM, and more. The A19 Pro chip comes with a 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU, paired with 12GB of RAM, 50% more than the prior model.

Apple also unveiled the much-anticipated iPhone Air with an entirely new 5.7mm-thin plateau design, featuring a 6.5-inch display, four colours (Space Black, Cloud White, Grey, and Sky Blue), the A19 Pro chip, a new N1 chip, a C1X modem twice as fast as before, a 3000-nit display, a 48MP fusion camera system, and unmatched power efficiency. Despite its slim design, Apple emphasised that it is its most durable iPhone yet.