Apple’s iPhone exports from India reached $1 billion in December, says Alkesh Kumar Sharma IT secretary

Apple’s iPhone exports: iPhone maker Apple is not only manufacturing mobile phones for India, but also exported handsets worth $1 billion (about Rs 8,200 crore) till December, a senior government official said on Monday. Speaking at The Business 20 (B20), the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community, Electronics and IT Secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma said several schemes have been launched to transform India from a service nation to a product nation.

“Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has really created a stir in the market. Our mobile manufacturing has gone to the next level. We are not only making it for India but Apple is exporting from India. The figure we have got now is that they have exported mobile phones worth $1 billion (about Rs 8,200 crore), Sharma said.

Earlier in the day, Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal had said that Apple is looking to increase its manufacturing in India as the business climate is helping global firms to make the country their base.

Apple currently manufactures the iPhone in India at manufacturing plants owned by contract manufacturers Foxconn and Wistron.

Both Foxconn and Pegatron’s manufacturing facilities are located in Tamil Nadu. Wistron’s facility is in Karnataka. They are participants of the Centre’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.

Sharma said that India is creating a complete ecosystem of electronic hardware, semiconductors and is working on creating facilities like fabrication plants. He said that the government has focused on emerging technologies.

 “We are doing a lot of research and development on deep tech. I have talked about supercomputing and quantum computing missions. We have also built 20 petaflops capacity which are now installed in many of our IITs and research institutes. Emerging technologies are a new fifth pillar for us,” he said.

The IT secretary said that the government is going to actively work to make India a nation of geniuses, from basic to advanced, with deep technical skills.

According to commerce ministry data, electronics goods exports are set to reach $16.67 billion in April-December 2022, up 51.56 per cent from $10.99 billion in the previous year.

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