That remark, made during Trump’s visit to Qatar’s Doha, doesn’t seem to have swayed the iPhone maker much from its plans to do just that.
Cook has said that most of the iPhones that will be sold in the US will be made in India rather than China and the company seems to be pushing forward with that plan.
One key reflection of this is the hum of machinery at Foxconn’s Devanahalli plant in Karnataka. Not only was it business as usual at the sprawling 300-acre campus of the Taiwanese contract manufacturer on Monday, the construction of dorms—an integral part of the Foxconn model—was also going on in full swing. The company is Apple’s biggest contract manufacturer.
The world’s largest electronics manufacturer is investing $2.56 billion in its Devanahalli plant. Spread across Doddagollahalli and Chapparadahalli villages in Devanahalli taluk, it’s 34 km from Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport. While Foxconn invested around Rs 3,000 crore in phase 1 (2023-24), the anticipated investment in the second phase (2026-27) is a similar amount. The manufacturing target is likely to be about 100,000 iPhones by December this year.
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Women to get preferenceThe dorms can house about 30,000 employees, making it the single largest such facility in India, people aware of the development told ET. Construction is expected to be completed by the year-end, they said. ET reported last week that Foxconn is likely to begin shipments from its Karnataka facility by June. This is expected to be among Foxconn’s largest facilities in the world, second only to China. In line with its China model, the company has also built dorms in Tamil Nadu to house employees at its Sriperumbudur unit. Those dorms can house around 18,000 workers.
To be clear, the dormitories are for workers, not executives.
Foxconn employees told ET women will be given preference for housing as they comprise 50-80% of the 30,000 workforce at the Devanahalli facility. On Monday, when ET visited the residential buildings in Devanahalli right behind the Foxconn iPhone assembly plant, a banner on the buildings read, “Safety alert month for the new dormitory project in area C&D of the Elephant Project.”
That project name refers to the Devanahalli iPhone plant.
Project Elephant is part of Foxconn’s China+1 strategy to diversify production away from that country. Foxconn is one of the primary suppliers of iPhones and its components, apart from Tata Electronics, in India. The Tata unit has acquired the India units of Wistron and Pegatron, both Apple vendors.
ETtechEmployees said the assembly of some iPhone variants began in May while that of others will start in August. ET found several Wan Hai container trucks parked near the campus, presumably to help with shipments starting next month. Wan Hai Lines is a Taiwanese container shipping company known for its Asia network.
Just as work is in full swing ahead of the iPhone 17 launch in September, the company is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that its dorm facility is on track.
A male employee told ET, “Women travel from far and wide. The dorms will help them with avoiding that. Previously I worked with the Tatas (also an Apple supplier). It was the same model there.”
Indian counterparts of Taiwanese employees at the plant said that senior-level Foxconn employees from Taiwan have rented homes nearby. A few other Taiwanese Foxconn employees are staying at hotels in Devanahalli.
Expats working at Foxconn have been renting residences at prominent real-estate projects, said Sandeep Reddy, cofounder of Zapkey, which aggregates and organises publicly available properties registration data. “Rents start from Rs 2.5 lakh,” Reddy told ET.
The assembly of iPhones has already started, said a female employee who works on the line. Women are working in shifts, including nights, on assembly operations. “It’s been only a year since everyone started working here, before which construction was still ongoing,” she said
Apple and Foxconn did not respond to ET’s queries.
In November last year, ET had reported that real estate firm BCD Group had leased 900 residential units, priced under Rs 45 lakh each, to Foxconn, in Hoskote, near Devanahalli, for a two-year period. Built with a total investment outlay of Rs 500 crore, the ready-to-move-in homes are located on a 75-acre site and will accommodate between 6,000 and 8,000 female workers.
The project has been planned to include commercial spaces, schools, healthcare facilities and entertainment options, ensuring that residents have access to all essential services within the township, BCD Group MD Angad Singh Bedi had said then.
BCD Group did not respond to fresh queries.
ET reported on March 31 that Foxconn was planning to produce 25–30 million iPhones at its India plants in 2025, more than twice the number it made in the country last year.
Apple’s Cook had said May 1 that in the June quarter, the company expects a majority of iPhones sold in the US to have India as their country of origin.
Foxconn has operations in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. Apart from the Bengaluru unit, the Taiwanese major has opened a new one in Hyderabad to make AirPods, reflecting the widening of the Apple portfolio in India. This is in addition to its existing large-scale operations at its Sriperumbudur campus near Chennai where the bulk of iPhone assembly takes place currently.
