CALIFORNIA: Apple is in talks with its suppliers to make MacBooks in Thailand as part of the company’s attempts to expand its manufacturing presence beyond China, Japan-based financial newspaper Nikkei has reported.
Suppliers participating in these talks already have manufacturing complexes in Thailand for other clients, and are discussing the potential assembly and production of components and modules for MacBooks, Nikkei reported citing sources from three suppliers in talks with Apple.
The tech giant has also been mass-producing its Apple Watch in Thailand for over an year, according to the report published on Thursday.
Divergence from China
Apple and its major suppliers have been shifting production away from China, where Foxconn’s biggest iPhone factory was last year disrupted by strict COVID-19 curbs.
Apple is also trying to avoid being impacted from the ongoing tensions between China and US.
Bloomberg seperately reported on Thursday that the tech giant has tripled its production of iPhones in India, assembling over $7 billion worth of smartphones in the country in last fiscal year.
Almost 7 percent of Apple’s iPhones are now manufactured in India, up from 1 percent in 2021, the report said.
In March, Foxconn announced its plans to ramp up investments outside of China. Another contract manufacturer of Apple, Pegatron Corp is in talks to set up a second factory in India as part of its efforts to expand production away from China, Reuters reported.
