Its exports in January-December 2025, according to the data provided by vendors to governments — central and states — reached a record $23 billion (or ₹2.03 trillion) — up nearly 85 per cent over the corresponding 12 months of 2024.
Apple’s main focus under the production-linked incentive scheme (PLI) in India till 2024 had remained expanding the exports of iPhones.
Exports increased each year. Apple increased it from ₹8,800 crore in 2021 to ₹36,234 crore in 2022. In 2023, that more than doubled to ₹74,000 crore. In 2024 exports climbed to ₹1.1 trillion.
Apple entered India with two vendors — Wistron and Foxconn — following the PLI scheme, which came in 2020.
After a year’s delay due to the pandemic and the border skirmish with China, the company began producing iPhones in 2021, primarily for export.
Since 2020, when Apple’s supply chain was shifting from China, there was an expectation that it would move many of its suppliers from mainland China to India.
The government even cleared 14 of its Chinese suppliers for investment in India in spite of restrictions under Press Note 3.
However, sensing the geopolitical tension and the government’s preference for building a supply chain that would empower and skill Indian companies, Apple from 2023 began bringing Indian companies into its supply chain. This was a tough decision, but one that would benefit the Indian ecosystem immensely, especially micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), due to technology transfer and skill acquisition.
The Tata group was the first to join the ecosystem when it took over Wistron’s Karnataka iPhone factory in 2023. Later, it acquired a large stake in Pegatron’s iPhone factory in Tamil Nadu. Since 2024, multiple Indian companies, a sizeable number of which are MSMEs, have joined the Apple supply chain as vendors of components and sub-assemblies. Prominent among these are Motherson, Hindalco, Wipro Pari, Jabil, Aequs, SFO Technologies, and Bharat Forge. Its suppliers are spread across eight states in India.
According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, value addition in smartphones over the last four years increased rapidly to reach 19 per cent by the middle of last year. This is nearly half the 40-45 per cent value addition China has been able to accomplish over the 18-year period, when the smartphone was first produced in China -- in 2007.
The government’s newly launched Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme is a big step in this direction. It is expected to further increase value addition to nearly 30 per cent over the next four years.
Several Apple suppliers are participating in this new scheme. The scheme is also expected to drive component exports from India in addition to smartphone exports, which now occupy top spot among exports, up from its 167th rank in 2015.
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