Apple suppliers become largest job creator in India's electronics despite occasional disruption halts

As Apple suppliers pick up their pace of investing in India, Apple has become the largest blue-collar job creator in India's electronics manufacturing industry. However, suppliers also witnessed occasional incidents that have led to production disruption.

Business Standard, citing employment data that manufacturers have filed with India's government, reported that Apple suppliers had created 100,000 new direct jobs in India since August 2021, when the Production Linked Incentive scheme for large-scale manufacturing took effect.

Taiwan-based Foxconn created 35,500 direct jobs, and Pegatron and Wistron generated 14,000 and 12,800 jobs, respectively. Salcomp contributes to more than 11,000 new direct jobs. Other manufacturers, such as Jabil, Foxclink, Sunwoda, Avary, and Tata Electronics, create the remaining new direct jobs thanks to Apple's diversification efforts.

Meanwhile, with suppliers speeding up their pace to move out of China, more investments are expected to be landed in India. Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga, deputy chairman of AirPods maker GoerTek, told Bloomberg that their clients are asking about GoerTek's plan to move out of China as the US-China conflict keeps expanding that may potentially result in supply chain disruptions.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates in an earlier research that it could take eight years to move just 10% of Apple's capacity out of China, but Yoshinaga argued it would be far quicker, saying currently, nine out of ten Chinese tech manufacturers are looking at diversifying away from China. GoerTek is investing US$280 million in a new Vietnam plant and considering investing in India.

Still, Apple suppliers' investments in India were not progressing smoothly in recent years. Reuters quoted an Indian government official saying that Foxlink, an iPhone charging cable maker, halted most of its production in India after a massive fire completely destroyed four of its ten assembly lines in Andhra Pradesh on February 27. Sources told Reuters that the four assembly lines might take two months to resume production, while the remaining six are expected to resume in a few days.

Taiwan-based Foxlink's India facilities began mass production in late 2020. Foxlink said in a statement on October 23, 2020, that its automation equipment was destroyed by a Chinese engineer who allegedly said Luxshare instructed him to do that.

On the other hand, Wistron's Indian production was disrupted in 2020 due to workers' violent protest against a non-payment wage issue and a food poisoning incident in Foxconn's Indian manufacturing facility that led to a protest against the poor living conditions in 2021.

Source: Apple, compiled by DIGITIMES Asia, March 2023