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Apple’s key contractor is moving ahead with a $1.5bn component plant near Chennai, further expanding the iPhone-maker’s supply chain in India even as Donald Trump demands it return manufacturing to the US.
Foxconn, which has assembled Apple’s devices for years, is set to build a display module facility in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, two government officials told the Financial Times. The plant would help the Taiwanese company supply Apple, its main customer.
The move represents the US tech giant’s latest tilt towards India and away from China — which remains its biggest manufacturing base by far. The shift had already started before the Covid-19 pandemic, which then frayed industrial supply chains and prompted the US iPhone maker to diversify to other countries.
However, the pivot has become politically contentious since the re-election of Trump, who has tangled with China over tariffs and is trying to push Apple to reshore manufacturing to America.
“We are treating you really good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years,” the US president said last week, lashing out at the Cupertino-based giant and its chief executive Tim Cook. “We are not interested in you building in India.”
Foxconn on Monday announced a $1.5bn investment in its Indian unit Yuzhan Technology India, via a London Stock Exchange filing.
Tamil Nadu’s state government in October approved a Rs131.8bn ($1.54bn) investment by Yuzhan in a display module assembly unit in the ESR Oragadam Industrial & Logistics Park, a short drive from Foxconn’s existing plant making iPhones near Chennai.
Officials, who asked not to be identified by name because of the political and commercial sensitivity of Apple’s manufacturing shift to India, said the $1.5bn was earmarked for this plant, adding that it would be supplying Apple.
The display module in an iPhone sits under the glass screen and provides all of the screen features including the touch interface, brightness and colour.
Foxconn and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Financial Times has previously reported that Apple intended to source from India all of the 60mn iPhones sold annually in the US by the end of next year.
The display unit investment near Chennai would be one of the largest yet in India’s electronics industry, which has expanded and become a major exporter, with the help of billions of dollars’ worth of production-linked incentives from Narendra Modi’s government.
Officials in Tamil Nadu previously said the new display unit plant would create about 14,000 jobs. India contributed 18 per cent of global iPhone production in 2024, a share that should go to 32 per cent in 2025, according to Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research.
India has also become the world’s second-largest smartphone market after China, measured by volume. The production increase by Apple’s suppliers Foxconn and Tata Electronics in southern India has been the biggest success of Modi’s “Make in India” drive to create more manufacturing jobs in the world’s most populous country.
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