New Delhi: India’s largest group Tata GroupAccording to a Bloomberg report, Taiwanese Apple Inc is close to acquiring the supplier’s factory, making it the first local company to assemble premium phones.
The report said the group will acquire a Wistron Corp factory in Karnataka worth over $600 million by August.
The two companies have been in talks for more than a year, Bloomberg reported, citing people in the know. The facility employs over 10,000 workers, who assemble the latest iPhone 14 models.
Wistron, which is exiting the iPhone business in India, had committed to ship at least $1.8 billion worth of iPhones from the factory in the fiscal year till March 2024. Tata will honor those commitments.
“Wistron exported iPhones worth nearly $500 million from India in the three months ended June 30, and Apple’s other major Taiwanese suppliers, Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp, also grew locally,” the report said. ” Apple is “looking to diversify away from China following the country’s Covid lockdown and rising tensions between Washington and Beijing”.
The 155-year-old Tata Group has recently made significant strides in the previously unknown areas of electronics manufacturing and ecommerce. This already forms the iPhone chassis, or metal backbone of the device.
Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran Said Last December, the group was looking to manufacture its own chipsets in India and was engaging with “several players”.
Nikkei Asia reported that “Tata’s move into chip manufacturing will break new ground for India, where the semiconductor market is set to more than double to $64 billion between 2021 and 2026…”
Incidentally, global contract electronics maker Taiwan’s Foxconn on Monday pulled out of its semiconductor joint venture with Indian conglomerate Vedanta.
It had signed an agreement last year to build a semiconductor and display production plant in Gujarat, which would see an investment of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
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