By mid 2025, India has become the largest supplier of smartphones to the US market with its share of exports to the country increasing by 44 percent annually compared to the previous year when it was 13 percent. To perspective that, the cumulative volume of Made in India smartphones increased a whopping 240 percent year over year, with 44 percent of smartphones imported into the US, increased by 13 percent of smartphone delivery in the second quarter of 2024.
In these same timeframes, China shipments of smart phones to the US plummeted to 25 percent in Q2 2025, compared to 61 per cent in Q2 2024 (that is the earthquake change that would have been unimaginable just three years ago).
The history of the emergence of India is, to a great extent, the history of Apple . Apple has increased its production capacity in India in the past few years and it has decided to focus most of its exportation to India to serve the US market in the year 2025. This change was even admitted by Apple CEO Tim Cook , who said that most iPhones sold in the US would be of Indian country of origin.
During the first half of 2025, the production of iPhone in India increased by 53 percent over the period in 2024 by almost 23.9 million. Indian exports were also increasing at a high rate to total of $22.56 billion which is a big improvement compared to the previous year of 14.71 billion.
One of the factors who have contributed to this surge is Tata Electronics. The Tata Electronics became the quickest expanding supplier to Apple and accounted for 37 percent of iPhone exports in India — compared to the previous 13 percent in 2024.
The US-China trade war is the catalyst of this change. It is an indication of an underlying trade-related conflict and the strategic move by manufacturers towards diversification of their supply chains, chiefly driven by the growth of iPhone production by Apple in India.
The US President Donald Trump imposed high tariffs on trading partners in the so-called reciprocal tariffs. Although initially smartphones and electronics were not subject to the very strictest tolls, Apple CEO Tim Cook reported that the products made in China did not escape the 20 percent minimum tariff. This saw the option of manufacturing in India where Apple and other brands were much more appealing because tariff exposure was relatively lower.
In a bid to protect themselves should high tariffs come the suppliers and Apple started to hoard inventories and hasten production in India as part of its China Plus One strategy.
It was not only India that was happy about the fall of China. A significant rise of 24 percent to 30 percent of US smartphone imports was also realized in Vietnam, and it strengthens its role as the third-largest source. This number was contributed largely by Samsung that has a significant production base in Vietnam.
It is India, though, that took the historic jump to the top position one that would have been difficult to even imagine even in 2021.
This didn't happen in a vacuum. The government of India had a target of attaining an electronics production of 300 billion by 2025-26, with a thick focus on smartphone exports. This assisted India to be the second-largest producer of mobile phones in the world and it has more than 200 manufacturing plants in the country.
The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) program was the key to this dream, which motivates international brands to establish and develop production on the Indian territory. Whereas China and Vietnam experienced a 2.78 percent and 17.6 percent year-on-year declines in exports in 2023-24, the export of India increased by more than 40 percent 2021-22, converting almost half of the total drop in exports of the two nations.
Tamil Nadu especially contributed immensely to this change by spear-heading industrial policies, and the increased production by Apple along with the introduction of major components manufacturers increased the change.
Apple was the king of sales even when manufacturing was transferred to India. The total shipments of smartphones in the US smartphone market amount to 27.1 million in Q2 2025. Apple dominated with a market share of 49 percent and shipped 13.3 million iPhones and Samsung with 31 percent and shipped 8.3 million phones. Motorola had a 12 percent market share of 3.2 million shipments.
Samsung had the best growth of 38 percent per year, Google by 13 percent and Apple experienced a 11 percent decline in shipments -in part a correction of the 25 percent increase in growth in the first quarter of 2025 as customers flocked to buy devices before expected tariffs.
Analysts urge caution. Apple and its contractors are targeting to make 32 percent of all iPhone manufacturing and 26 percent of its worth in India by 2026-27. The manufacturing ecosystem in India is however less mature as compared to China with inefficient supply chain and less experienced workforce hindering the speed of scalability. Indian factories have their problems such as low iPhone yield rate of approximately 50, and compared to Chinese iPhone assembly lines, which operate on two 12-hour shifts, Indian labour law would insist on three eight-hour shifts, which would have more workers.
The India strategy of Apple is not a risk management that is advanced but does not imply the wholesale abandonment of China. According to projections even by the most ambitious Apple, India will contribute about 25 percent to world iPhone production by 2027, a large number but hardly an all-inclusive one.
The unquestioned leadership of the China in the world smartphone production is fracturing. India had transformed into the largest source of US bound smartphones in a mere four years after contributing a tiny percentage of the same. With the strategic change of Apple, government policies, the global trend of China Plus One and US China trade tensions, India has emerged as a true manufacturing giant.
As Fareed Zakaria put it sharply - what is in your pocket is the latest iPhone but it was probably made in India. That one sentence distills one of the most transformative industrial changes of the 21 st century.
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