To see it today, the most recurring question is this: who knows if Tim Cook, in full Covid emergency, would have chosen India as a home of the new iPhones. The answer, of course, we cannot know. But a possible repentance of Apple’s CEO remains among the most accredited hypotheses. Because today, on the eve of the launch of iPhone 17 (official arrival date, 9 September next), this series of the Made in Cupertino phone seems to have a huge geopolitical value. Full of news and unexpected events. Especially due to the bad commercial relations between the United States and India, with Trump who imposed a duties of 50%.
We take a step back, because Apple’s Indian road has been traced many years ago, and falls into the “China -Plus” strategy that Apple has chased since 2016, when the CEO, Tim Cook, met Prime Minister Modi. A strategy that led India to represent up to 14 % of the global iPhone production, up to the family models 16.
The first experiment dates back to 2017, when the Californian giant entrusts Wistron, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer, the production of the iPhone model if in Bengaluru (the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka). At the beginning, as mentioned, it is more than anything else an experiment on a reduced scale, designed for the Indian market and to adapt to local requirements, such as the 30 % share of components of Indian origin.
The red light, the one that gives Tim Cook something bigger than a simple idea, then arrives with Covid. While the epidemic bites Chinese cities, Xi Jinping imposes unprecedented measures. The factories also stop. And the production of iPhone (up to totally Chinese time) is freezing, creating many problems for Apple.
From there the belief of a plan B. A plan called India, also designed to avoid geopolitical trap, considering the increasingly tense relationships between Washington and Beijing. Just in 2020 Apple brings the first production of Premium models to India, starting the assembly of the iPhone 11 at a Foxconn structure near Chennai, marking a significant step towards greater production autonomy of the country of southern Asia. From there, one piece at a time, the iPhones begin to speak more and more Indian.