With the government increasing customs duty on the printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) - the key component of any smartphone - from 10 per cent to 20 per cent, Apple's supplier Wistron will soon begin assembling PCBs for high-end iPhones. According to reliable sources, the assembling of PCBs would begin at Taiwanese manufacturer's new iPhone plant near Bengaluru.
The move is also seen as to slowly end dependency on China for component manufacturing, currently under a lockdown owing to Novel Coronavirus that has claimed hundreds of lives.
Wistron, which announced in 2017 plans to invest Rs 3,000 crore in the Narasupra industrial sector in Karnataka's Kolar district, started Apple operations with assembling low-end iPhone SE and later iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7 last year.
The other Apple supplier Foxconn currently assembles iPhone XR models in India.
Currently, nearly 320 million PCBA units are in operation, out of which, 160 million are being used in smartphones, according to the data provided by the India Cellular & Electronics Association of India (ICEA).
Some smartphone makers have well-oiled surface-mount technology (SMT) assembly lines in place in which the components are mounted or placed directly onto the surface of a printed circuit board (PCB).
Top smartphone brands have planned to make India a mobile phone export hub. The biggest mobile phone manufacturers Foxconn and Samsung are expanding their manufacturing capabilities to serve the Indian consumers and to export outside the country, and Apple is no exception.
IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in September last year said that Apple has started manufacturing phones in India including components.
"They have started making iPhones in India and also components both for exports. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I want a robust presence of Apple in India. A super robust presence of Samsung in India. Apple is also on board as far as the India story is concerned," Prasad told media after a round table discussion with CEOs of global manufacturing companies.
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