Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, January 17 (Xinhua) Apple manufacturers are strengthening the flexibility of their supply chain due to geographical factors and the epidemic, while India, Vietnam and Brazil are the most likely to become Apple's next manufacturing centers.

India is expected to account for 50 per cent of Apple's iPhone global production capacity by 2027, according to DigiTimes Research's latest forecasts. This figure is more aggressive than JPMorgan Chase's earlier prediction that India will assemble 25 per cent of the world's iPhone by 2025.

Luke Lin, an analyst at DigiTimes, said: "given the uncertainty in the supply chain, Apple needs to spread the risk and the pace of the migration of the supply chain to India will be further accelerated in the future."

India overtook the UK to become the world's fifth-largest economy last year, and contract manufacturers such as Foxconn and Hutchison have assembled products such as iPhone phones for Apple in India, CTOnews.com warned. The analyst predicts that India will account for 25 per cent of iPhone capacity by the end of 2023 and as much as 40 per cent by 2025.

This figure is a significant increase from the current share of less than 5%. This will bring India's production level in line with that of Chinese mainland, the South China Morning Post reported.

Analysts point out that China produced 85 per cent of the world's iPhone last year, but could lose its dominant position as Apple's device manufacturing hub in the future. He expects India and Vietnam to be the "biggest beneficiaries" of Apple's efforts to shift more of its manufacturing supply chain outside China.

Of course, the process will not be so fast, and even according to the analyst's forecast, India will only have up to 50 per cent of capacity in four or five years' time.

Analysts believe that the process of transferring Apple's production line will be difficult, not just because it is difficult to build an iPhone production line, such as the lack of enough high-quality young workers and government-provided infrastructure in other countries, and even more difficult to gather an adequate Apple supply chain.

Take the list of major suppliers announced by Apple in October last year as an example. 98% of the purchased materials, modules and parts of its production line are supplied by 190 suppliers, of which 91 are Chinese enterprises, accounting for about 47.9%. Of the 190 suppliers, 150 (including foreign-funded enterprises) have set up factories in the mainland, accounting for about 79%.

If the supply chain can not be concentrated around the production line, freight, tariffs, time errors and other costs will rise sharply, and this is also a difficult situation for Apple to accept, and it is also a key factor that makes it difficult for big manufacturers to transfer their production bases quickly.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.