Tata Group and Taiwan’s Pegatron are in advanced talks to explore a partnership opportunity to manufacture iPhones in India. According to a Reuters report, the Tata Group is already building an iPhone manufacturing plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. It is planning to form a partnership with Pegatron to run the said manufacturing plant. The Reuters report quotes two sources close to the development to report the latest local iPhone manufacturing news.
Let’s take a look at the details of the purported Tata-Pegatron partnership to manufacture iPhones in India.
Tata Group and Pegatron in Talks to Manufacture iPhones in India
As mentioned before, Tata Group is already building a new iPhone manufacturing plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. Earlier reports have revealed that the Hosur plant is expected to be one of the country’s largest iPhone assembly factories.
The new plant —which is expected to be fully functional within a year and a half— will reportedly have a 50,000-strong workforce and 20 assembly lines. This aligns with Apple’s plans to expand its manufacturing presence more in South Asia and move away from China.
Reuters has quoted two sources with direct knowledge of the matter to reveal that Tata is seeking a joint venture with Taiwans’s Pegatron to run the Hosur plant. Notably, Tata wants Pegatron to offer technical and engineering support at the plant to speed up the manufacturing process.
According to these sources, Tata Group cannot build everything from scratch and needs Pegatron’s expertise. However, the sources also revealed that the Indian conglomerate will have the majority stake in the Joint Venture should it come through.
Notably, the iPhone manufacturing plant in Hosur is not the first rodeo of the Tata Group. The company already manufactures iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus at the iPhone assembly plant in Karnataka. This iPhone assembly plant was acquired by the company from Taiwan’s Wistron for $125 million in 2023. The company now owns 100% equity stakes in Wistrons’s assembly lines in its faculty located outside of Bengaluru. With this move, Tata became the first Indian company to manufacture iPhones locally.
On the other hand, Pegatron also already manufactures iPhones in India independently. The company has an iPhone assembly plant in Tamil Nadu and plans to add a second facility soon. The JV with Tata Group could help it with this goal. The Taiwanese company accounts for around 10% of total iPhone production in India.
