New iPhone factory near Bengaluru to employ MASSIVE workforce from Jharkhand

The Indian government has long wanted the “Made in India” tag for Apple's iPhone and while there are already a few plants doing so, a new plant is coming in Hosur near Bengaluru wherein a workforce of 60000 will be employed to make Apple iPhones. Confirmed by Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in a recent press conference, he confirmed that the new plant will be the biggest iPhone manufacturing facility in India and will employ tribal women from Jharkhand.

"Apple's iPhone is now getting made in India and its biggest plant in India is being set up at Hosur near Bengaluru. 60,000 people work in a single factory. The first 6,000 employees of these 60,000 employees are our tribal sisters from places nearby Ranchi and Hazaribagh. Tribal sisters have been trained to make Apple iPhone," the minister said.

iPhone factory in Hosur coming soon

The report from Gadgets 360 also confirms that Apple has already outsourced the iPhone enclosures to Tata Electronics, which already has a plant in Hosur. Tata also wants to to jump into the iPhone manufacturing game in India, thereby helping with more local jobs and local production. At the moment, Apple iPhones are manufactured in India by three contract manufacturers – Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wostron.

Foxconn recently started manufacturing the iPhone 14 in India and also makes some of the older iPhone models. The local manufacturing hasn't helped Apple reduce the price of the iPhone, considering that these plans only assemble the devices in India.

What remains to be seen is whether the Hosur facility pushed Apple to manufacture the Pro variants of the iPhone in India. India has so far manufactured only the standard iPhone models and the iPhone SE variants. The Pro variants are imported from China as CBUs and cost more as a result.

Apple also wants to shift its manufacturing from China to India over the next few years and the reason behind this is to reduce reliance on China. Additionally, China's recent COVID lockdowns have impacted the manufacturing of iPhones, that too at a time when Apple is witness a surge in demand for its more expensive iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.