Breaking all previous records of smartphone exports, Apple’s iPhone exports touched Rs 60,000 crore, or around $7 billion, in the first seven months (April-October) of the current fiscal. This translates into an average of $1-billion exports per month, a feat achieved for the first time by any company, according to industry sources.
The milestone follows the smartphone production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme announced in 2020, after which Apple began shifting its manufacturing to India.
An email sent to Apple’s global spokesperson went unanswered till the time of going to the press.
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Apple is not just exporting iPhones 14, 15 and 16 from India, but for the first time, is also exporting Pro and Pro Max models after it started producing iPhones 16 Pro and Pro Max locally in October this year. The dollar value of Pro and Pro Max models is nearly 1.5-2 times higher than other iPhone models.
In its first year in FY22, Apple exported approximately iPhones worth $1.2 billion in the entire fiscal. In FY23, it more than quadrupled the exports to reach the $5-billion mark. In the last fiscal, it doubled iPhone exports from India to reach a $10-billion mark. In the current fiscal, it has reached 70% of last year’s export numbers within the first seven months.
iPhones are exported from India to Europe, West Asia and the US. Smartphone exports to the US, propelled by iPhone exports, have seen an unprecedented growth. Before the PLI scheme was announced in FY19, India exported merely $5.23 million worth of smartphones to the US, making it the 23rd largest export from India to the US. In FY24, smartphone exports to the US saw a meteoric rise to reach $5.56 billion, making them the second-largest exported product to the US after diamonds. A vast majority of these exports were iPhones which were produced in India across three factories operated by Foxconn, Pegatron and Tata Electronics — all three are participants in the government’s most successful of the 14 PLI schemes.
This year, smartphone exports of $2.8 billion during April-August — again aided by iPhones — are now India’s largest exported item to the US, ahead of diamond exports of $2.1 billion for the same period. This represents a 51% growth over the April-August period last year, which saw $1.9-billion smartphone exports from India to the US.
In FY24, Apple produced iPhones worth $14 billion in India — the largest by any company. This constitutes approximately 14% of Apple’s global iPhone production.
According to industry experts, by 2026, Apple is expected to shift 26% of its global iPhone capacity to India.