Trump wants US to copy India's iPhone feat

India is carving out a new space for Foxconn and other high-end manufacturers, just as President Trump demands US companies do the same at home, write Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar from Devanahalli, India

- Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar

A new iPhone factory in an out-of-the-way corner of India looks like a spaceship from another planet. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles most of the world's iPhones for Apple, has landed amid the boulders and millet fields of Devanahalli.

The sleek buildings rising on the 300-acre site, operational but still growing, are emerging evidence of an estimated $2.5 billion investment.

This is what President Donald Trump wants Apple to do in the United States. What is happening in this part of India shows both why that sounds attractive and why it will probably not happen.

In India, Apple is doubling down on a bet it placed after the Covid-19 pandemic began and before Trump's re-election. Many countries, starting with the United States, were eager to reduce their reliance on factories in China. Apple, profoundly dependent on Chinese production, was quick to act.

Analysts at Counterpoint Research calculated that India had succeeded in satisfying 18% of the global demand for iPhones by early this year, two years after Foxconn started making iPhones in India. By the end of 2025, with the Devanahalli plant fully online, Foxconn is expected to be assembling from 25% to 30% of iPhones in India.

This newest factory is the largest of several making Apple products in India. Its full frame is still rising from red dust. Cranes are at work above the skeletons of high-rise dormitories for women workers. But about 8,000 people are already at work on two factory floors. Soon there should be 40,000.

The effects on the region are transformative. It's a field day for job-seekers and landowners. And the kind of crazy-quilt supply chain of smaller industries that feeds Apple's factory towns in China is coalescing in India's heartland. Businesses are selling Foxconn the goods and services it needs to make iPhones, including tiny parts, assembly-line equipment and worker recruitment.