Ali Rogin:

The world's most valuable company Apple at one point in time had their main supplier making 500,000 of its cell phones per day at one mega factory in China. Then last year, COVID-19 lockdowns and protests of harsh working conditions caused major disruptions at the factory. It cost Apple an estimated $1 billion per week.

Since then, Apple has reportedly told its manufacturing partners that it wants to do more business outside of China. Apple's main supplier, the Taiwan based Foxconn has been moving more of its production out of China into India.

Nilesh Christopher is the South Asia correspondent for the technology publication Rest of World and he's been reporting on the transition. Nilesh thank you so much for joining us.

Let's talk a little bit more about why Foxconn has been making these moves out of China into India.

Nilesh Christopher, Rest of World: I think it all ties to geopolitics. For the longest time, iPhones have always been produced in China. But over the past couple of years. The U.S.-China trade war is effectively meant that Apple has been increasingly pushing its suppliers to shift its supply chain outside of China.

So, what effectively has happened over the past year is Foxconn chairman has met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi thrice to be able to build relations and improve their investments in the country. The government has offered subsidies to Foxconn to the tune of a million dollars to be able to ramp up production. And all this has effectively meant that Foxconn right now has to hit the ground running and be able to produce iPhone 15s.

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