Tata plans new iPhone assembly plants as Apple looks to expand in India

iPhone assembly plant: Tata group is planning to build India's biggest iPhone assembly plants, reported Bloomberg. This comes, as the conglomerate is looking to tap into Apple's ambition to increase manufacturing in India.

Tata Factory

As per the Bloomberg report, Tata wants to construct the factory in Hosur in the southern Tamil Nadu state. The facility will likely have about 20 assembly lines and employ 50,000 workers within two years. The report also mentions that Tata group is aiming to make the site operational in 12 to 18 months.

Also Read: Tata to make iPhones in India for global markets; acquires Wistron plant for $125 mn

Tata already has an electronic manufacturing unit in Hosur where it manufactures iPhone enclosures, or metal casings and the Bloomberg report mentioned that hiring in the unit has been accelerated. In an effort to make its partnership with Apple go beyond manufacturing, Tata has also said that it will launch 100 retail stores focused on Apple products.

As per Bloomberg, the new plant in Hosur is set to be mid-sized among iPhone factories globally. It would likely be bigger than the one Tata acquired from Wistron, which employs more than 10,000 people, and smaller than Foxconn’s biggest China facilities that employ hundreds of thousands.

This plan is expected to bolster Apple’s efforts to localize its supply chain and strengthen its partnership with Tata. The Indian conglomerate already has an iPhone factory it acquired from Wistron Corp, located in Karnataka.

The Production linked subsidies introduced by the Union government has so far spurred Apple’s key suppliers such as Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp. to ramp up in India. In the last fiscal, Apple assemble more than $7 billion of iPhones in India increasing its share of the device’s production to about 7%.