In five years, Indian smartphone exports have increased from 5 million to more than 8 billion dollars. © BUDRUL CHUKRUT / SOPA IMAGES/REA When he founded his small business in 1868 in Bombey, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata had four dreams: cotton, steel, hotels and electric dams. This excessive ambition was largely exceeded, including during his lifetime. Tata today employs more than a million people in energy, chemicals, automobiles, telecommunications, hotels, distribution, air transport, IT services… The huge conglomerates, which have disappeared from western landscape, still have beautiful remains in India. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers India bids farewell to Ratan Tata, legendary industrialist of the subcontinent Read later The destiny of Tata, a sort of state within a state, follows the evolution of his country. Also, its latest territory is electronics, mother of all battles of the 21st century. It aims to produce phones, software and electronic chips. To start, more modestly, it is becoming the main assembler of Apple iPhones in India. According to the Times of India, it has just bought the shares of the Taiwanese subcontractor Pegatron in a factory in the south of the country, after having done the same in 2023 with the acquisition of the factory of another Taiwanese, Wistron. It thus poses as a competitor to Foxconn, the giant, also from Taiwan, and Apple’s leading partner in the world, including in India. A thankless job In five years, exports of Indian smartphones have increased from 5 million dollars (around 4.73 million euros) to more than 8 billion, according to the Bloomberg agency. The first product exported to the United States. The country owes all this to Apple’s decision to shift part of its production from China to less sensitive countries, such as Vietnam or India. In 2023, the Indian Federation produced 12% of iPhones sold worldwide. It should be 24% by the end of this year. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers These French companies which are betting on India: “The India of today is the China of twenty years ago” Read later The road will be long for Tata. Apple’s assembly job is thankless with its minimal margins, its quality and timing requirements so as not to penalize the extraordinarily fragmented global value chain. All this in a very eruptive country where riots are not rare, even within factories, as Wistron experienced in 2020. But this is the price of moving up the high-tech sector, as Wistron did China in its time. A sort of passing of the baton, without knowing whether India will be able to follow as far in the spectacular footsteps of its cumbersome neighbor.
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