Tata nears a deal to make iPhones in India: Report

The Tata Group is nearing an agreement to acquire an Apple supplier’s factory in Karnataka, reported Bloomberg.

The Tata Group is nearing an agreement to acquire an Apple supplier’s factory in Karnataka, which could help it become the first Indian company to make iPhones, reported Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources who were familiar with the matter.

The acquisition of the Wistron Corp. factory could take place as early as August and may be worth over $600 million, as per the report. The factory’s more than 10,000 employees work on assembling Apple’s iPhone 14.

While Wistron is planning to bow out of the business, Tata has plans to ship $1.8 billion in iPhones from the location. This was originally Wistron’s aim, in order to gain financial incentives from the government,

The report comes as U.S. tech companies explore manufacturing vital hardware in countries outside of China. The U.S and Chinese administrations continue to clamp down on each other’s tech companies and obstruct the free flow of advanced technology between the two nations.

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Apple suppliers were also affected by China’s strict COVID-19 lockdowns as part of its zero-COVID policy. In one instance, workers escaped from Apple’s largest iPhone assembly factory in Zhengzhou due to a lockdown in October 2022.

An official statement on the acquisition has not yet come from Apple, Tata, or Wistron.