Apple is in the early stages of a multi-decade transition away from reliance on Chinese factories, actively "friend-shoring" production capacity to Southeast Asian countries. The latest Bloomberg report highlights this major shift.
People familiar with trade data say Apple exported $6 billion worth of made-in-India iPhones in the six months through September. That figure is expected to jump to $10 billion by the end of the year.
Here's more from Bloomberg:
Three of Apple's suppliers — Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp., and homegrown Tata Electronics — assemble iPhones in southern India. Foxconn's local unit, based on the outskirts of Chennai, is the top supplier in India and accounts for half of the country's iPhone exports.
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The subsidies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration helped Apple assemble its pricey iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models, with better cameras and titanium bodies, in India this year. It's also seeking to open new retail stores, including in the southern tech hub of Bangalore and western city of Pune.
Even though China still produces the largest share of iPhones, the trend of friend-shoring has been underway for several years. This trend will only intensify through the end of the decade as CEO Tim Cook looks to diversify supply chains out of China.
Our coverage on friend-shoring:
Michael Every at Rabobank outlined years ago that India was the largest beneficiary of friend-shoring.
"... and, of course, Tim Cook can't publicly announce the rejiggering of supply chains out of China as it would infuriate Beijing. So he recently praised Apple's 'symbiotic' relationship with China," we noted last April.
Last month, a wild re-shoring trend was revealed with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's plant in Arizona producing Apple's first batch of A16 chips.
Earlier this year, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Yahoo Finance that Cook has "hedged his bets" with China by friend-shoring iPhone production to Southeast Asian countries. No one wants a repeat of messy iPhone supply chains, like what happened in China during the Covid shutdowns.