Foxconn plans to undertake a major staffing campaign for its iPhone factory in India over the next two years.
This was done because iPhone production in China continued to experience disruptions, including disruption to various lockdown rules implemented by the Chinese government to suppress the spread of COVID-19, we were quoted as saying by Reuters, Saturday (12/11/2022).
The latest news is that iPhone production at the Foxconn factory located in Zhengzhou has been disrupted by the lockdown rules. Even though the Zhengzhou factory is the largest iPhone factory in the world.
To the extent that Apple had to lower its estimated iPhone 14 shipments, which then had an impact on their income -- which should have shot up -- during the holiday season or the end of 2022.
For this reason, Foxconn plans to quadruple the number of its employees in India, namely adding 53 thousand employees to 70 thousand over the next two years. This information comes from an unnamed source in the Indian government.
However, the Foxconn factory in South India, in Tamil Nadu to be precise, is far smaller than the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, which has 200,000 employees. But still the factory in India is very important to reduce Apple's dependence on factories in China.
The Foxconn factory in India opened for the first time in 2019, and its production capacity is continuously being increased. In fact, for 2022 the factory has been trusted to produce the iPhone 14 which has not been released for too long. Previously, the factory was only trusted to produce older generations of iPhones.
Both Apple and Foxconn declined to comment on these rumors. However, previously chairman Liu Young-way said that Foxconn would adjust its production capacity and output, so that it is hoped that the impact of the production disruption in China will not be felt at the end of the 2022 holiday season.
The Foxconn factory in Tamil Nadu is actually not without fault. In 2021, this factory became famous because of the Foxconn employee food poisoning incident which led to demonstrations, because the cleanliness and health conditions of the employee dormitories were called deplorable.
So far, three Apple partners have produced iPhones in India. Namely Foxconn and Pegatron in Tamil Nadu, and Wistron in Karnataka.