Apple’s top-end iPhones, assembled in India by Foxconn’s local unit, are likely to hit Indian stores in August, Reuters reported.
The move will potentially help the tech giant to drop prices in India, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market.
Expanding local assembly will help Apple save on high taxes levied on the import of fully-built devices, as well as meet local sourcing norms for opening its own retail stores in India.
“Local production will give Apple the leeway to play with the margins of their distributors and indirectly price their phones lower,” Reuters quoted Rushabh Doshi, a research director at tech consultancy Canalys, as saying.
Some approvals are pending, but the India-made iPhone XR and XS devices are expected to hit the market by August, a company insider told the news agency on condition of anonymity as the matter was not yet public.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Foxconn, the local unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, said it does not comment on customers or their products.
Apple’s devices are coveted by millions of Indians, but its premium pricing has limited its market share to a meagre 1 per cent to the gain of rivals such as China’s OnePlus.
It was earlier reported that Foxconn would begin assembling iPhone X family devices at a facility in Tamil Nadu this year. Apple also assembles the lower-cost SE, 6S and 7 models in India through Wistron Corp’s local unit in Bengaluru.
The Narendra Modi-led government has tried to position India as a hub for smartphone manufacturing, wooing global players with access to a market with over a billion wireless connections and cheap labour.
