A quarter of all iPhones are now made in India. Apple is pushing for more.

• Apple iPhone production in India surged 53% in 2025, hitting 55 million units – a quarter of global output.
• Foxconn and Tata expand despite tariff pressures on China.
• India’s role in Apple’s supply chain not a fallback strategy.

Apple iPhone production in India crossed a threshold last year that the company had quietly been building toward for nearly a decade. According to Bloombergwhich cited people familiar with the figures, Apple assembled roughly 55 million iPhones in India in 2025, a 53% increase from the 36 million units produced there in 2024.

That puts India’s share at around 25% of Apple’s total global output of 220 to 230 million iPhones annually. The numbers confirm a target India’s own trade ministry had flagged back in 2023, when officials said Apple’s goal was to raise local manufacturing from roughly 6% of global output to 25% by 2025.

That it has arrived on schedule, despite supply chain friction and geopolitical headwinds, is a statement about both Apple’s intent and the pace at which India’s manufacturing base has matured.

The context here matters. US tariffs on Chinese-made goods have made manufacturing in China an increasingly expensive proposition for Apple. iPhones assembled in China now face import duties of around 55% when entering the US market, while Indian-made devices have been assessed at 10%.

The difference is large enough to have changed the economics of Apple’s entire export strategy, and the company moved accordingly. In March 2025, Apple chartered cargo aircraft to airlift approximately US$2 billion worth of iPhones from India to the US before a new round of tariffs could take effect.

Foxconn’s Indian operations shipped US$1.31 billion in that single month alone, matching its combined January and February totals. Tata Electronics shipped a further US$612 million, up 63% from February.

Foxconn leads, Tata catches up

Two manufacturers anchor Apple iPhone production in India. Foxconn, which has committed US$1.5 billion to build a plant in Chennai and is constructing a 13 million square foot facility near Bengaluru International Airport, holds the largest share of current output. Tata Electronics has been the faster mover. Its share of India’s iPhone exports rose from 13% in 2024 to around 37-40% through 2025, according to Canalys, after absorbing Wistron’s Karnataka factory and expanding its operations in Hosur, Tamil Nadu.

Analysts now project Tata could account for half of India’s total iPhone assembly in two years. If that plays out, it would give Apple a different supply base outside China, one where a domestic Indian conglomerate holds a position comparable to Foxconn

India’s PLI scheme did the heavy lifting

India’s Production-Linked Incentive scheme has been central to how quickly this scaling happened. The PLI programme ties government subsidies to export performance, which helped manufacturers offset real structural disadvantages: logistics costs in India remain higher than in China, and the local supplier ecosystem, while growing, is still thinner.

Between April and October 2024 alone, electronics production worth US$10 billion qualified for PLI support, with US$7 billion of that exported. The scheme has also generated around 175,000 new manufacturing jobs, nearly three-quarters filled by women.

Apple also worked to reduce friction at the operational level. The company lobbied Indian airport authorities to bring customs clearance times at Chennai Airport down from 30 hours to six, a change that was critical to the March 2025 airlift operation, when six dedicated cargo jets moved 600 tonnes of iPhones to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York in days.

iPhones now India’s biggest export

The broader economic impact is hard to ignore. In 2025, the iPhone became India’s single largest export item, with roughly US$23 billion worth of devices shipped from Indian factories. Smartphones overtook all other categories to become India’s top export for the first time, reaching $30.13 billion in all brands. Apple accounted for about 76% of that total.

Between January and May 2025, iPhone exports from India reached $9.35 billion, more than triple the same period in 2024. Nearly 97% of Apple’s Indian exports in the March to May quarter went to the US market, up from around 50% a year earlier. India is not a secondary production site supplying local demand. It is, increasingly, the factory Apple runs when it needs to supply America.

China not out of the picture

China still produces well over 70% of the world’s iPhones. The supply chain depth built there over two decades, component suppliers, tooling expertise, and a trained engineering workforce, cannot be rebuilt elsewhere quickly.

Beijing is also not a passive observer to this shift. Reports emerged in 2025 that Chinese authorities instructed Foxconn to recall engineers from its Indian facilities, a move that disrupted production timelines and forced Apple to bring in Taiwanese and Japanese technical staff to fill the gap.

Pressure from the US side has been equally unpredictable. Even as Apple routes more production through India to reduce tariff exposure, President Trump warned Tim Cook directly against deepening India manufacturing, threatening a 25% duty on Indian-made iPhones sold in the US. That threat has not become policy, but it has forced Apple into a position where its manufacturing geography is now a diplomatic variable as much as an operational one.

The company’s announced US$600 billion US investment commitment is being read as an attempt to build political cover against further tariff threats. Counterpoint Research projects made-in-India iPhones will account for 25% to 30% of global shipments through 2025, against 18% in 2024.

Bloomberg’s figures confirm Apple hit the lower end of that range. Whether it reaches 35% by 2026, which some analysts are pencilling in, will depend on how quickly the new Foxconn Bengaluru plant comes online, how fast Tata can scale its workforce, and whether the tariff environment stays stable enough for Apple to keep committing capital at the pace it has set.

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