December 4, 2022: In recent weeks tech giants Apple is accelerating its plans to shift some of its production outside China and telling suppliers to plan more for assembling the product elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam.

The people involved in the discussions said that Apple is also looking to reduce the dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by the Foxconn Technology Group.

The recent turmoil at China’s Zhengzhou ‘iPhone City’ plant propels Apple to shift its production. In China, Zhengzhou has as many as 300,000 workers working at a factory run by Foxconn to make iPhones and other Apple products. At one point, it alone made up about 85 per cent of the Pro lineup of iPhones.

In late November, protests erupted at the world’s largest iPhone factory in central China as authorities at the Foxconn plant struggled to contain a COVID-19 outbreak while maintaining production ahead of the peak holiday season.

In videos protested online, the protesters were shouting “Stand up for your rights!” Riot police were present, the videos show.

After a year of events that weakened China’s status as a stable manufacturing centre, the upheaval means Apple no longer feels comfortable having so much of its business tied up in one place.

Apple has told its manufacturing partners that it wants them to start trying to do more of this work outside of China. Unless places such as India and Vietnam can do NPI too, they will remain stuck playing second fiddle, say supply-chain specialists. However, the slowing global economy and slowing hiring at Apple have made it hard for the tech giant to allocate personnel for NPI work with new suppliers and new countries.

Earlier in November, problems at the Foxconn plant led Apple to cut estimates for high-end iPhone 14 shipments and issue a rare warning to investors over the delays.

China is further scrambling Apple’s strained supply and highlighting how the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy is hurting global technology firms.