A few days ago, it was reported that the Pegatron factory under Pegatron is relocating, and it is expected that all of them will be relocated to India. This is another Apple foundry that followed Apple's footsteps and moved to India. So is manufacturing in India really reliable?
Apple seems to be firm in promoting the transfer of foundries to India. It first pushed Wistron to go to India to set up factories. Wistron also showed its determination. After deciding to transfer to India, Wistron packaged and sold the Shanghai factory to Compared with Foxconn and Pegatron, which still retain some factories in mainland China, Luxshare Precision undoubtedly highlights the determination of Wistron.
After Wistron, Foxconn also went to India to set up a factory in 2019. So far, Foxconn has many factories in India, the largest of which has 17,000 workers. This has been increased to 70,000 in response to Apple's request to increase the proportion of manufacturing in India.
Foxconn is not only moving to India itself, but it is also pushing the industry chain to move to India. For example, Guo Taiqiang, the younger brother of Foxconn founder Terry Gou, has set up a power adapter factory in India. The factory has 10 production lines. Driven by Foxconn, India Some industrial chain enterprises have emerged.
Pegatron is the last foundry factory promoted by Apple to transfer to India. Last year, it was reported that Apple asked Pegatron to also set up a factory in India. Now Shanghai Pegatron is rumored to be relocating. With this closure, the remaining business is said to be transferred to Shishuo in Kunshan, which means that Pegatron has not completely abandoned its factories in mainland China.
The choice of Foxconn and Pegatron may explain the concerns of these OEMs about going to India to set up factories. In a short period of time, Indian manufacturing cannot completely replace Chinese manufacturing. In fact, Foxconn has a deep understanding of this.
Foxconn has actually set up a factory in India very early. As early as 2015, Foxconn announced that it would invest 5 billion US dollars to build a factory in India. However, Foxconn has been setting up a factory in India since then. The establishment of a joint venture factory in India has taken an important step, and then in 2019, a factory will be set up in India to manufacture for Apple.
Foxconn has been developing in India for so many years, and it has been difficult to compare with Chinese manufacturing. The culture in India is quite complicated. The voices in India are not uniform, the culture is diverse, and the proportion of illiterate Indians is relatively high, which makes it difficult for Foxconn to find enough employees in India. , This is also an important reason why Foxconn's largest factory in India still has only 17,000 people in three years of development. In contrast, Zhengzhou Foxconn has 300,000 employees in just two years.
Recently, Wistron’s factory in India is said to have been favored by Tata, one of the four major consortiums in India. Previous media reports pointed to a joint venture between Tata and Wistron, but recent reports indicate that Tata asked Wistron to sell Most of the shares, this is not a joint venture, but Tata's annexation of Wistron's factory, which may make Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron, etc. have doubts.
For so many years, foreign investment in India has suffered repeated setbacks, including Nokia’s resolute closure of all operations in India due to tax issues in the early years, Google and Amazon in the United States were fined in India, and recently Xiaomi was confiscated in India. Funding, as well as the unresolved tax issues of OPPO and vivo in India, all make these foundries worry about going to India to set up factories.
In this way, it is not difficult to understand why Foxconn and Pegatron have responded to Apple’s request to go to India to set up factories, but they still retain some factories in mainland China, and most of Foxconn’s factories in mainland China will continue to exist. After all, the risk of setting up a factory in India is too high and the variables are too high, and the same is true for Apple. If Indian manufacturing cannot replace Chinese manufacturing in the end, iPhone production will still need to rely on Chinese manufacturing.