This is an article that paraphrases another article from the Financial Times (https://archive.is/iuXAm) both of which lack any real sources or facts from Apple themselves. The only people quoted are a random Bain consultant and Vivek Wadhwa who basically shows up with an opinion whenever anyone says "India" - regardless of whether he actually understands the industry or not.
None of this is to say that the problems might not be real, but bear in mind that China literally started producing electronics in the 80s, a 40 year headstart. And even then, until the early 2000s even in India Chinese goods had the reputation of being low quality, and for good reason. It takes years of experience on multiple levels to achieve the level of production that Apple targets. But it's not unachievable, even in India.
The country has pulled this off in other sectors - IT, Aerospace, Automotives and Pharmaceuticals to name a few.
This is HN so the moment I say IT and India in the same sentence a megathread of outsourcing woes will start to form. But Tech in India is much more than outsourcing for the last 2 decades - solid tech companies serving global and local markets like Freshworks, Zomato, Zoho, BharatPe, RazorPay, Chargebee etc have emerged.
Apple is big enough and has sufficient resources to have known that manufacturing in India will have a learning curve. It's not like they sent a team of 5 engineers on a plane and told them to go get it built. Apple has been operating in the country for well over a decade now - it's only just starting to scale things up on the production side. This will also pass.
at this scale and complexity it's definitely one of the earlier projects. Apple does almost nothing "off the shelf" - tools, processes and often even materials are engineered to their specific needs. That's different from the more lego like manufacturing that most electronics require.
None of this is to say that the problems might not be real, but bear in mind that China literally started producing electronics in the 80s, a 40 year headstart. And even then, until the early 2000s even in India Chinese goods had the reputation of being low quality, and for good reason. It takes years of experience on multiple levels to achieve the level of production that Apple targets. But it's not unachievable, even in India.
The country has pulled this off in other sectors - IT, Aerospace, Automotives and Pharmaceuticals to name a few.
This is HN so the moment I say IT and India in the same sentence a megathread of outsourcing woes will start to form. But Tech in India is much more than outsourcing for the last 2 decades - solid tech companies serving global and local markets like Freshworks, Zomato, Zoho, BharatPe, RazorPay, Chargebee etc have emerged.
Apple is big enough and has sufficient resources to have known that manufacturing in India will have a learning curve. It's not like they sent a team of 5 engineers on a plane and told them to go get it built. Apple has been operating in the country for well over a decade now - it's only just starting to scale things up on the production side. This will also pass.