India’s iPhone exports jump 57% y-o-y to 20.4 million units in January-May 2025

NEW DELHI : Apple’s contract manufacturers in India exported over 20.4 million iPhones from January to May 2025, a steep 57 per cent jump from the same 5-month period in 2024, data from global research firm Canalys (now Omdia) sourced by businessline shows.

Interestingly, despite President Donald Trump’s calls to Apple to keep production in the US, 77 per cent of these units exported from India were to the US. The share of units exported to the US as of May 2025 is 77 per cent, up from 54 per cent during the same period in 2024

This increase in iPhone exports to the US is, however, eating into India’s exports to other markets. Exports to other markets like the Netherlands, Czech Republic, the UK and Italy are declining as US rises, as per Omdia.

NON-US MARKETS HIT

The increase in iPhone exports to the US is, however, eat­ing into India’s ship­ments to other mar­kets. Exports to other mar­kets such as the Neth­er­lands, the Czech Repub­lic, the UK and Italy are declin­ing as the US share con­tin­ues to grow, as per Omdia. India is help­ing serve Apple’s US con­sumer needs at a time when iPhone ship­ments from China have been impacted by the tar­iffi ten­sions. Omdia data revealed that China sent around 0.9 mil­lion units of iPhones in April 2025, com­pared to 3.7 mil­lion in April 2024.

Tata ramp­ing up its con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing work for Apple has been a key con­trib­utor to the ship­ments surge from India.

“While Fox­conn still leads with 52 per cent of total iPhone exports so far this year, Tata has rap­idly emerged as a force in Apple’s India strategy,” San­yam Chaur­asia, Senior Ana­lyst Mobil­ity, Cana­lys, said. “Its (Tata’s) share jumped from 13 per cent in 2024 to 37 per cent YTD, ship­ping over 7.5 mil­lion iPhones in just five months,” he added.

TATAS, A FORCE

Chaur­asia high­lights that besides its own EMS expan­sion in Hosur, Tata’s move to gain con­trol of Wis­tron’s facil­ity in Karnataka have helped add to its exports. “Tata is now a cred­ible second pil­lar along­side Fox­conn in Apple’s India-based man­u­fac­tur­ing base,” he said.

“From cas­ing to com­pon­ent integ­ra­tion, Tata’s ver­tical play reduces depend­en­cies and speeds up out­put,” he added.

Ana­lysts track­ing Apple’s sup­ply chain note that with the pro­duc­tion of iPhone Pro and Pro Max mod­els also mov­ing to India, the levels of work­force pre­pared­ness here is now com­plete, but it will still be a chal­lenge for Indian vendors to scale to grow­ing demand. Fur­ther, China also remains deeply entrenched in Apple’s man­u­fac­tur­ing eco­sys­tem and is home to over 200 key sup­pli­ers.

‘MAKE IN US’ UNVIABLE

Sanc­hit Vir Gogia, CEO, Grey­hound Research, believes that des­pite the polit­ical rhet­oric in the US and renewed pres­sure on Apple to reshore man­u­fac­tur­ing, large-scale US pro­duc­tion of iPhones is “eco­nom­ic­ally and oper­a­tion­ally infeas­ible in the near term.” India’s scal­able pro­duc­tion base, rising domestic mar­ket, policy sup­port, and the geo­pol­it­ical neut­ral­ity required for longterm plan­ning work to its advant­age, he adds.