A bigger bite of Apple

Apple’s efforts to navigate through the disruption of US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China augurs well for the scaling up of its iPhone production in India. The $3-trillion US tech giant has been deepening its local presence over the last four years. Now it plans to shift the assembly of all US-sold iPhones as soon as next year to India, according to the Financial Times. This is an opportunity that must be seized although it is not without its challenges. Apple’s pivot away from China — where is still has the manufacturing ecosystem to assemble 80% of all iPhones — has been driven by Trump’s disruptive tariffs of as much as 145% on the mainland.