Apple said Monday it is assembling its flagship iPhone 14 in India as the U.S. technology giant looks to shift some production away from China.

“The new iPhone 14 lineup introduces groundbreaking new technologies and important safety capabilities. We’re excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India,” the company said in a statement.

Apple’s main iPhone assembler, Foxconn, is manufacturing the devices at its Sriperumbudur factory on the outskirts of Chennai.

The Cupertino, California, giant has been manufacturing iPhones in India since 2017 but these were usually older models. This time with the iPhone 14, Apple is producing its latest model in India for the first time, close to the device’s launch. Apple introduced the iPhone 14 earlier this month.

Apple will sell India-produced phones locally but also export them to other markets globally. Customers in India will begin receiving the locally manufactured devices in the next few days.

JPMorgan analysts said in a note this month that Apple will move 5% of its global production for the iPhone 14 to India by late 2022. Apple could also make 25% of all iPhones by 2025 in India, JPMorgan said.

Apple’s focus on manufacturing in India highlights the tech giant’s desire to diversify production away from China and boost customers in India, which is currently a small market for the company.

Apple still relies heavily on China for the majority of iPhone production.

But Beijing has persisted with a strategy of lockdowns to control Covid resurgences even as most of the world looks to open their societies. The zero-Covid policy has disrupted production at factories across China where lockdowns take place and highlighted some potential weak spots in Apple’s supply chain.

India has looked to boost local manufacturing of electronics through incentives.

Meanwhile, Apple has been looking to increase sales in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market. Apple had just a 3.8% market share in India last year, as lower cost competitors such as Samsung and China’s Xiaomi continue to dominate, according to Counterpoint Research.

However, Apple was the top-selling brand in the ultra-premium segment, which are phones over 45,000 Indian rupees ($552), in the second quarter of this year. That’s thanks to strong momentum of its previous generation iPhone 13 models.

The iPhone 14 starts at 79,900 rupees ($980).

“Apple has a strong momentum in India. India is among the 20+ countries in the world where the premiumization trend has just started,” Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Sunday took a dig on the mainstream American media, including The Washington Post, for their “biased” coverage of India. “I look at the media. You know, there are some newspapers you know, exactly, what they are going to write including one in this town,” Jaishankar told a gathering of Indian-Americans from across the country amidst laughter and applause.

The prestigious Washington Post is the national daily published from Washington DC and currently being owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon. “My point is there are biases, there are efforts really, to determine, …. Look the more India goes its way and the people who believe that they were the custodians and the shapers of India lose ground in India the more actually, some of these debaters gonna come outside,” Jaishankar said responding to a question on the increase in anti-Indian forces in this country.

Such groups, he asserted, are “not winning in India.” Such groups, the minister noted, will try and win outside or try and shape India from outside.”This is something which we need to be aware of. It is important to contest. It isn’t because most Americans will not know what sort of the nuances and the complexities of back home, so, it’s important not to sit back, not to let other people define me. That is something which I feel as a community is very important for us,” he said.

Responding to a question on misrepresentation of the Kashmir issue in the American capital, the External Affairs Minister said if there is a terrorist incident, it doesn’t matter what faith the person who’s killed belongs to; if there are Indian soldiers or Indian policemen who are abducted; If there are people working for the government, or citizens going about their business, who will lose their lives.

“How often do you hear people talking about it; pronouncing it, in fact, look at the media coverage. What does the media cover what does the media not cover? That is how actually opinions and perceptions are shaped,” he said.”There is a big song and dance about the Internet being cut. Now, if you’ve reached the stage where you say an Internet cut is more dangerous than the loss of human lives, then what can I say?” Jaishankar said amidst applause from the audience.

“If you look at A (Article) 370-issue. What was a temporary provision of the Constitution was finally put to rest this was supposed to be an act of majority. This was supposed to be majoritarian. Tell me what was happening in Kashmir was not majoritarian?, I think the way facts are slanted, things are laid out. What is right, what is wrong is confused. This is actually politics at work,” he said.”We should not let it go. We should contest it. We should educate. We should shape the narrative. This is a competitive world. We need to get our messages out. That is my message to you,” he said.

“We are not serving our country well or our beliefs well, or even our sense of what is right and wrong but by staying out of these debates. I think we have opinions we must express them we must share it with people, we must educate others on what is right and what is wrong. “I honestly believe that if you look at the whole 370 the Jammu and Kashmir situation, to me it’s mind boggling. Something whose merits were so obvious, should actually there even be people who would think different way,” he said.

The United States Senate voted on 21 September to confirm Dr Arati Prabhakar, an Indian American, as the next director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), making Prabhakar the first woman, immigrant, and person of colour to ever serve in that role.

Confirmed with a 56-40 vote, she will now be US President Joe Biden’s Chief Advisor for Science and Technology, and a member of the cabinet.

Previously in June 2022, Biden had announced Prabhakar’s nomination and praised her saying in a statement that she was,”a brilliant and highly-respected engineer and applied physicist.”

“I share Dr Prabhakar’s belief that America has the most powerful innovation machine the world has ever seen.”
Joe Biden, US President.

Under Biden, OSTP in conjunction with the National Security Council worked to develop the American Pandemic Preparedness Plan and it also heads the White House’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.

Prabhakar’s family came to the United States when she was three and created a home for themselves in Lubbock, Texas. With an electrical engineering degree from Texas Tech University, she went on to become the first woman to earn a PhD in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Her professional career started as a Congressional Fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment after which she spent 15 years in Silicon Valley. In 2019, she founded a non-profit organisation called Actuate that focuses on bringing new actors to the table in order to develop solutions to the daunting challenges of climate, health, trustworthy data, information technology, and opening “access to opportunity” for every person.

Prabhakar has also served as the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and became the first woman to do so.