Text/Youyu Review/Ziyang Proofreader/Zhiqiu
Although China is known as the "factory of the world", due to the rising labor costs in recent years, many companies are gradually moving their production lines to Southeast Asia, including Apple.
Among them, India has become a new target for Apple because of its large population, low labor force, and being one of the few countries with a complete range of industries. In the past two years, Apple has frequently shifted production lines from China to India.
At the same time, Foxconn, which has always been "dependent" on Apple's development, has also followed apple's footsteps and actively transferred its production capacity from China to India, while investing in the construction of factories in India.
Not long ago, Apple announced that it will mass-produce the iPhone 13 in India from February next year, and the reason given by Apple is to meet the needs of the market and exports.
It is undeniable that the Indian smartphone market is in rapid development, which may be one of the reasons why Apple produces the iPhone 13 in the Indian market, but what Apple is playing, everyone actually knows.
And it turns out that Apple and Foxconn want to replace China with India, and it is likely to end in failure. Jiwei Network news on December 27, there are foreign media reports that senior officials in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu said that Foxconn's iPhone factory in India extended the shutdown time.
The cause of the incident began with the large-scale poisoning incident some time ago. It is understood that just last week, more than 250 female employees of The iPhone factory of Foxconn in India were taken to the hospital because of food poisoning, which was a big deal at the time and once triggered protests.
To this end, Foxconn's Indian iPhone factory announced a one-week suspension of production, and now the factory has extended the closure time by 3 days. Poisoning aside, prolonging factory shutdowns will inevitably affect the normal production plan of the iPhone.
Jiwei Network pointed out in the report that the factory is not only responsible for the production of iPhone 12 models, but also began trial production of iPhone 13. In the face of the vagaries of the international situation, for Apple, this company is of strategic significance.
It should be noted that this is not the first time that Foxconn has had an accident at an iPhone factory in India. Prior to this, the epidemic in India had been repeated, and Foxconn's factories in India had also had large-scale infections, so that the relevant factories had to be shut down.
Reuters reported in May this year that foxconn's iPhone production in the Indian factory was reduced by more than 50% because of the continued spread of the epidemic in India. The reuters report said the factory is located in Tamil Nadu.
In addition to the Indian plant, the Foxconn plant in Vietnam also reduced or stopped production due to the epidemic. In this context, in mid-June this year, the Global Network reported that Apple intends to transfer some orders to Foxconn's factories in China, for which Foxconn also increased the bonus to recruit people.
In fact, not only Foxconn, but other manufacturers in Apple's supply chain have also suffered setbacks in India before, such as Wistron, another major assembly plant for iPhones. In December 2020, Wistron was attacked by thousands of employees for unpaid wages, and the damage is expected to be around $60 million.
In contrast, Apple's iPhone assembly plant in China has hardly had a large-scale protest, and the current domestic epidemic has basically stabilized, and the production capacity of the iPhone will hardly be affected.
As far as the current situation is concerned, whether it is Apple or Foxconn, it is not easy to get rid of Chinese manufacturing.