Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn has bought a huge tract of land on the outskirts of Indian tech hub Bengaluru, the key Apple supplier said in a filing Tuesday as it looks to diversify production away from China.
Also known by its official name, Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn is the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturer and a principal assembler of Apple iPhones.
Both companies are seeking to shift manufacturing away from China after strict Covid policies, a bout of industrial unrest and ongoing diplomatic tensions with the United States hurt production. The 1.2 million-square-metre acquisition in Devanahalli, near the airport for Bengaluru, was announced in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.
It said that subsidiary Foxconn Hon Hai Technology India Mega Development was paying three billion rupees ($37 million) for the site, the size of more than 50 Manhattan city blocks. Another Foxconn unit was acquiring land use rights to a 480,000-square-metre site in Vietnam’s Nghe An province, it added.
Karnataka state chief minister Basavaraj S. Bommai said in March that Apple would “soon” manufacture iPhones at a new plant that would create “about 100,000 jobs”. Bloomberg News reported that month that Foxconn was planning to invest $700 million in a new factory in Karnataka.
Foxconn chairman Young Liu visited the state then and also met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has urged foreign firms to manufacture goods in the South Asian nation. Foxconn has manufactured Apple handsets in India since 2019 at its plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The company is expected to break ground on a new facility in Telangana state next week, local media reported. Two other Taiwanese suppliers, Wistron and Pegatron, also manufacture and assemble Apple devices in India.
Apple has been making its own push into India and chief executive Tim Cook last month opened its first two retail stores in the world’s most populous country. The California-based firm is betting big on the nation of 1.4 billion people — home to the second-highest number of smartphone users in the world, after China.
Navkendar Singh of market intelligence firm International Data Corporation told AFP that Apple had already proved “quite successful” in India, with domestic iPhone sales of 6.7 million last year.
Source: eNCA
In other news – Muvhango bids farewell to Chief Azwindini after 23 years
Another big exit hits Soapieville within a week and this time it takes on Chiefly proportions. Gabriel Temudzani makes his final appearance on Muvhango when Tenda sets Chief Azwindini Mukwevho alight after he was killed on Friday night.
Gabriel, who was born in Tshivhilidulu in the Nzhelele area, in Venda, began his acting career in 1995. He made his TV debut on Muvhango in 2000. His days will be very different now. Learn more
