Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, recently said that most of the iPhones that will be sold in the United States (US) will come from the Indian market. This is a major development, but not an unexpected one. After the Trump administration implemented higher tariffs on countries like China, Apple's next best alternative to source iPhones at a lower cost was India. Everyone in the industry knew that the shift is coming and it was only a matter of "when" and not "if".
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In the company's recent earnings call, Tim Cook said, "The existing tariffs that apply to Apple today are based on the product's country of origin... We do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin and Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPods products sold in the US. China would continue to be the country of origin for the vast majority of total product sales outside the US."
However, Apple hasn't exactly existed China. There still plenty of countries where imports from China are cheap, and thus, Apple will continue to leverage its manufacturing ecosystem in China to export phones from there to the global markets. Apple's cost for iPhones is expected to go up by $900 million in the June quarter in the US, assuming there are no further tariff revisions.
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While the tariffs are lower for India compared to China, they are still there and significant enough to warrant Apple to increase the pricing of the upcoming iPhone 17 series to maintain profitability. Apple is actively investing more in India to increase production and grow market share in the country.
