The Tata group will now manufacture iPhones in India for domestic and global markets, said Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday, October 27.
The development comes after Wistron Corporation agreed to sell a plant in the southern part of the country to the conglomerate.
‘Congratulations to the Tata team for taking over Wistron operations,’ Mr Chandrasekhar said in a post on X.
Mr Chandrasekhar also said that now within just two and a half years, the Tata group will start making iPhones from India for domestic and global markets from India.
He added Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visionary PLI scheme has already propelled India into becoming a trusted & major hub for smartphone manufacturing and exports.
‘The MeitY stands fully in support in growth of global Indian electronics companies that will in turn support global Electronic brands that want to make India their trusted manufacturing & talent partner and to realize PMs goal of making India a global electronics power,’ he said in the post.
Wistron’s board on Friday granted approval for its subsidiary SMS InfoComm (Singapore) Pte Ltd and Wistron Hong Kong Limited to sign the share purchase agreement with Tata Electronics Private Ltd (TEPL) for the sale of its 100 per cent indirect stake in Wistron InfoComm Manufacturing (India) Pvt Ltd (WMMI).
The transaction price is tentatively estimated at $125 million.
Apple started assembling iPhones in India in 2017 with its budget iPhone SE through Wistron’s facility in Karnataka. Earlier, iPhones in India used to be imported for the first few months of launch before local production started in the country.
Apple has already been manufacturing some iPhone models in India and planning to scale up production here by over fivefold to around $40 billion (about 3.32 lakh crore) in the next 4-5 years.
Currently, there are three contract manufacturers of iPhones in India — Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron. They manufacture iPhone 13, 14 and 14 Plus models in the country.
Apple is also producing the iPhone 15 at the Foxconn plant near Chennai. This is the first time that the tech giant is selling a made-in-India iPhone right from the launch stage.
This year, the company started producing iPhone 15 from Day 1.
The Foxconn plant near Chennai is also in the process of producing the iPhone 15 Plus.