Apple is moving some AirPods production to India.
It is yet another move to reduce dependence on China, which has shown its limits with Covid. Apple had already started producing some units in Vietnam.
As we’ve reported time and time again, Apple has started moving part of its supply chain to India. The long-term goal is to diversify the production sites of its flagship devices, in an attempt to decrease its dependence on China.
A decision made imperative by Covid and the frequent lockdowns imposed by the Chinese authorities, which has shown the vulnerabilities of a system that centralizes all production centers in a single jurisdiction, with potentially destabilizing (if not paralyzing) effects in the event of serious events geopolitical.
According to Bloomberg, Apple has made the decision to move part of the production of its AirPods to India . Recall that Apple has already started manufacturing its earphones in Vietnam . The company would now have asked two of its suppliers to transfer the assembly of the products to India, and would also have entrusted the production of the plastic cases of the AirPods to a local company.
More and more companies are looking to India as the most important resource to reduce their dependence on China. It’s not just Covid: trade relations between China and the United States have reached a level of serious tension and Beijing’s constant threats to launch military action against Taiwan certainly don’t help. Big Western companies are preparing for the worst.
A report last year suggested that a quarter of all iPhones could be made in India by 2025, and another indicated that this could increase to half of all iPhones by 2027. Indian company Jabil has started to send AirPods cases , i.e. plastic cases, to China and Vietnam, where the wireless earphones are assembled. With Jabil making the cases and Foxconn and Luxshare making some electronic parts in India, Apple would be able to move almost the entire supply chain within the new country.
