Apple Is Making All Four iPhone 17 Models in India in a ‘Watershed’ Pivot From China, Report Says

Apple is manufacturing all four of its iPhone 17 models in India ahead of next month’s launch, according to Bloomberg. That marks a first for the company, as it tries to mitigate the effects of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on products produced in China.

The production is taking place at five Indian factories. Tata Group is managing half of the manufacturing in new plants in the southern state Tamil Nadu and Taiwan’s Foxconn will be manufacturing iPhones near the Bangalore airport.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple will launch its four iPhone 17 models sometime in September (check out all the rumored iPhone 17 features) in what may be the last iteration of the company’s typical late-summer product launches. Apple reportedly will begin two-phase rollouts in 2026.  

India has become the No. 1 maker of smartphones shipped to the US, and its iPhone production there jumped 63% (to $7.5 billion in exports) in the second quarter of 2025 as Apple has maneuvered through the new landscape of US tariffs.

Sanyam Chaurasia, principal analyst at Omdia, called it “a watershed moment” in global smartphone manufacturing. He noted that the increasing production in India has been focused on mature phone models and those intended for export.

“China will remain central for Apple’s flagship innovation and base models. However, the trend is clear: The center of gravity in iPhone production is tilting toward a multicountry model,” Chaurasia said. 

Early this year, CEO Tim Cook said that Apple would be moving nearly all of its assembly of US-bound iPhones to India to avoid tariff penalties. Chaurasia said there was a 27% increase in US-bound iPhones made in India from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025.

However, China will still be the top producer (by far) of iPhones to non-US markets.

“Apple isn’t abandoning China, but it is de-risking by building parallel supply chains, and India has emerged as the most critical alternative,” said Chaurasia.