iPhone manufacturing plant to be built in Bengaluru: Foxconn will invest Rs 5.7 thousand crores for this

Foxconn Technology Group, a partner of Apple Inc., has planned to invest about $ 700 million (about Rs 5.7 thousand crore) in a new plant in India to increase local production. Bloomberg has given this information in one of its reports.
Manufacturing from China is being shifted to India due to rising tensions between the US and China. After geopolitical tension and the Corona epidemic, other American tech giants including Apple are working on expanding their manufacturing facilities outside China as well.
People associated with the case told that the Taiwanese company has planned to build a plant on a 300-acre site around the airport in Bengaluru. Apart from making factory parts, it will also be able to assemble Apple handsets. Foxconn can also use this site to produce some parts for the new electric vehicle business.
With the construction of this plant in India, about 1 lakh jobs are expected to be created. The company's massive iPhone assembly complex in Zhengzhou, China, currently employs about 200,000 workers. However, this number increases during the peak production season. This investment of Foxconn in India is its biggest single investment to date.
Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 with the iPhone SE. It has three Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) partners – Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron. After iPhone SE, manufacturing of the iPhone 11, iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 was also done in India. Foxconn's plant is in Sriperumbudur near Chennai.
All three contract manufacturers of Apple are part of the Rs 41,000 crore Production-Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) of the Government of India. It is only after this scheme that iPhone manufacturing has picked up in India. In 2020, the Government of India launched the PLI Scheme. Through this scheme, companies from outside countries get an opportunity to take advantage of local manufacturing, as well as earn incentives for it.
Most iPhones are assembled in China. Is it because of the low cost of labour? According to a report by Investopedia, the average wage of an iPhone worker is $10 per hour. Top earners earn approximately $27 per hour.
According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the reason for manufacturing in China is not the low labour cost. If that were the case, Apple could make its phones at much cheaper locations. The main reason, according to Cook, is the skill required in tooling engineering. They claim that the specific skill set is no longer available in the US, but China has the expertise.
iPhones are available at the lowest prices in the US. Despite manufacturing in China, iPhones are sold more expensively than in the US. This is due to currency fluctuations and the high value-added tax imposed in China. Similarly, despite manufacturing in India, the iPhone is sold much more expensive than in the US. After America, Hong Kong, and Japan are such places where it is available cheap.