News Brief
Apple chief executive Tim Cook pictured after opening the iPhone maker's Apple BKC — their first store in India.
As reported earlier, Apple has achieved a significant milestone by exporting iPhones worth $10 billion from India during the financial year 2023-24 (FY24), recording a 100 per cent increase from the previous year.
Moreover, the Apple ecosystem became the largest creator of blue-collar jobs in the country by directly employing more than 1.5 lakh individuals since the implementation of the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for smartphones in August 2021.
Buoyed by this success, officials in the Electronics and IT ministry expect that the supplier chain ecosystem will expand to employ around 5 lakh individuals in the next three years, Indian Express reported.
While one of every seven iPhones sold globally in FY24 was made in India, this share is expected to go up to a quarter of iPhones by 2028, government officials say. 5 crore iPhones can be annually manufactured in India.
The growth initiatives are boosted by the PLI scheme as over Rs 4,500 crore will be received by smartphone manufacturers for meeting their FY23 targets. India has also moved forward from just assembling smartphones to manufacturing components.
"Contract manufacturing is a complex process and requires precision work. Over the last few years Indian manufacturers have perfected these processes and are meeting global standards and requirements," Vaishnaw was quoted as saying by IE.