India will become the third assembler of iPhones when Apple will open its facility in Bengaluru

It can be safely said that India is now placed on the global map and is now on the radar of many multinationals, including smartphone makers. Recently, Apple decided to assemble iPhones in Bengaluru and with this move, India will become the third country to assemble the iPhones

Except for one in Brazil, all of Apple's assembly units for its bestselling product are in China.

The company uses a global and fairly complex supply chain. The parts for the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac are manufactured, mostly by third parties, across 28 countries.

Apple has 766 suppliers, of which 346 are based in China, 126 in Japan, and 69 in the US. There is one in India -in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. That's a unit of Flextronics. But it's not clear what the unit makes. Some parts made by these suppliers are sub-assembled in certain locations. All the sub-assembled units and other parts are brought together for final assembly in either China or Brazil in the case of iPhones.

For Mac books they are final assembled in China, US, and Ireland and the last of these is Apple's own facility. For the iPod, China is the only final assembly location.

Now with India becoming one of the world's biggest smartphone markets and one of iPhone's fastest growing markets, Apple has decided to assemble the iPhone here. As reported last week, Taiwan's Wistron, one of Apple's suppliers and assemblers, will set up a facility in Bengaluru's industrial hub of Peenya for the purpose. The products from this facility are expected to be available in the domestic market towards the end of next year. Wistron has three supply facilities for Apple and an iPhone final assembly unit in China.

"An assembly unit does not require big investments," Jaipal Singh, market analyst at research firm IDC, told ET.

He feels that this has been a strategy that all Chinese handset manufacturers have followed in India over the past couple of years.

"Labour in India is cheaper than in China. It makes sense to grow the Indian market by establishing a domestic plant," he told ET.

According to the experts the unit would also manufacture for exports over time. Data from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research showed Apple sold 2.5 million iPhones in India from October 2015 to September 2016, arise of more than 50% over the year-ago period.