Apple’s biggest-ever leak happened in India. Will firms rethink their China relocations?

In the wake of a cyberattack on a local Apple partner, insiders say India has a long way to go before challenging China as a manufacturer When Apple set its sights on India as its next promising market, CEO Tim Cook planned to take a leaf out of the company’s China playbook – a retail and manufacturing strategy that had paid hefty dividends to the US tech giant. “We are, in essence, taking what we learned in China years ago and how we scale to China and bringing that to bear,” Cook told investors in February 2023. The company had just seen record quarterly sales in the Indian market, and was just weeks ahead of the opening of Apple’s first stores in the country. “India is a hugely exciting market for us.” At the time, Cook’s optimism in India also carried a degree of pragmatism. To navigate the rising trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies and avoid US tariffs on China-made goods – both the duties already in place and those likely to be imposed in the future – Apple had bet on India to become its next manufacturing hub. India began to deliver. In 2022, the country produced around 6 per cent of all iPhones, but by 2026, that figure was expected to surpass 25 per cent, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

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