Foxconn to make iPhone enclosures in Tamil Nadu as Apple shifts focus to India: Reports

The company is now looking to deepen its local operations with a broader manufacturing role.

Foxconn, Apple’s key manufacturing partner, is planning to start making iPhone enclosures in India, marking a new phase in its expansion in the country. According to a report by The Economic Times, the Taiwanese electronics giant is setting up a new unit within the ESR Industrial Park at Oragadam in Tamil Nadu for this purpose.

So far, only Tata Electronics has been manufacturing iPhone enclosures in India. Foxconn has largely focused on assembling iPhones at its facility in Sriperumbudur, also in Tamil Nadu. But the company is now looking to deepen its local operations with a broader manufacturing role.

“Foxconn plans to start making enclosures in Tamil Nadu as they deepen their footprint in the country,” a person aware of the matter told The Economic Times. Construction for the new unit has already started. It will be located near another upcoming Foxconn plant that will assemble display modules, also within the same industrial park, the report added.

Analysts told Economic Times that Foxconn’s entry into the iPhone enclosure segment indicates that Apple is keen to diversify its component suppliers in India, mirroring its strategy in China, where multiple vendors are involved in different stages of production.

Foxconn is also expanding in other parts of India. Its new unit in Devanahalli, near Bengaluru, is nearly ready, and commercial shipments of iPhones from there are expected to begin as early as June. In Hyderabad, the company has set up another facility to assemble AirPods.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that almost all of Foxconn’s iPhones exported from India between March and May 2025 were shipped to the United States, a clear sign of Apple’s shift in supply chain strategy. During these three months, Foxconn exported iPhones worth $3.2 billion from India, with 97 percent going to the U.S., according to customs data accessed by Reuters.

In May alone, India's shipments of iPhones to the U.S. were nearly $1 billion, the second-highest monthly export figure after March’s record $1.3 billion, the data showed. This is a big leap from the 2024 average, where just over 50 percent of India-made iPhones were headed to the U.S., with the rest going to countries like the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the UK.