Foxconn has been one of the major drivers in the Make in India initiative, having announced a deal to manufacture Gionee, Xiaomi and several other brands’ devices in India. In total, Foxconn plans to bring about 10 to 12 manufacturing plants to India, largely owing to the government which is willing to relax the strict regulations that even prevents a foreign brand from directly opening a retail store in India.
A part of this relaxation will see the government of India even allow Apple to bring their state of the art Apple Stores to India. We expect to see one feature in the upcoming Apple keynotes. About the manufacturing plant coming up in India to make the iPhones, it has been reported that the site will be in Maharashtra. The facility would be about 1200 acres in land size and would take about 18 months to come up, right from the day that the deal is finalised. So you could expect the iPhone 7s, given things go as per the plan to be made in India, a couple of generations from the currently available iPhones. The entire manufacturing plant would cost about $10billion in order to be done right through.
The manufacturing site is not the only one Apple facility coming up. It has been reported that Apple is working on a development center in Hyderabad which will employee about 150 Apple, where more than 4,500 people will be involved in the construction of a $25million facility. Tim Cook has already laid plenty of emphasis on the fact that India is an important market for them and that it is at a stage where China was a few years ago, making it an absolutely critical market to crack for them. It is not clear whether the iPhones manufactured in India will be sold in India or just exported out. But, you would assume that if the devices manufactured in India then the cost of the iPhone would go down, making the phone a very attractive proposition.