Hon Hai, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, has started assembling Apple Inc's latest smartphone, the iPhone 15, at its factory in India, which will be officially released in September, foreign media reported. This means that the time gap between China and India to mass-produce Apple's latest phone is narrowing.

This time, India's goal is likely to be to get closer to the delivery time in China, where earlier production was six to nine months behind China.

Apple started making older models in India in 2017; In September 2022, Hon Hai started production of iPhone14 in India, which is the first time India has produced Apple's latest model phone.

Data show that in 2022, the Chinese market share of Apple's mobile phone production and assembly is 96%, followed by India, accounting for about 4%. That figure is only 1.3 percent in 2020.

Some agencies predict that the production and assembly volume of iPhone in India will exceed 7% this year. After all, Apple plans to shift 25 percent of its production to India by 2025, and has already done so - tripling iPhone production in India to more than $7 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March.

Industry analysts at TechInsights point out that more than 10% of iPhone 15s will be "assembled in India", in other words, more and more iphones will be made in India.

However, there are serious shortcomings in the local supply of India's industrial chain, and India has no local production capabilities such as components and molds, most of which need to be imported. How many iPhone 15s India can eventually produce will largely depend on securing a sufficient number of components, most of which need to be imported from China.

But according to sources, Foxconn's factory in Sriperumbudur is responsible for assembling the new iPhone. In addition to the Indian market, in addition to Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron will also follow up with mass production.

India became Apple's fifth largest market for the first time in the second quarter, while China surpassed the United States. TechInsights predicts that India will soon become the largest exporter of Apple phones.