NEW DELHI: India’s Tata Electronics has agreed to buy a majority stake in Taiwanese company Pegatron’s only iPhone factory in India, forming a new joint venture that strengthens Tata’s position as a supplier to Apple. Reuters Reported, citing sources.
Under the deal announced internally last week, Tata will own 60% and run day-to-day operations under the joint venture, while Pegatron will retain the rest and provide technical support, said the two sources, who requested anonymity because details have not yet been announced. .
The sources did not clarify the financial details of the deal.
Tata declined to comment, while Apple and Pegatron did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries on Sunday.
Reuters was the first to report in April that Pegatron had received Apple’s support and was in advanced talks to sell its sole iPhone factory in India to Tata, marking the Taiwanese company’s latest retreat from its partnership with Apple.
Apple is increasingly looking to diversify its supply chain outside of China amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington. For India’s Tata, the Pegatron plant in Chennai will boost its plans to manufacture iPhones.
Tata is one of India’s largest conglomerates and has rapidly expanded into iPhone manufacturing, competing with the only other contract iPhone manufacturer operating in India, Foxconn.
The first source said that the announcement of the completion of the deal was made internally at the iPhone factory on Friday.
The second source said that the two companies plan to apply for approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in the coming days.
Tata already runs an iPhone assembly plant in the southern state of Karnataka, which it acquired from Taiwan’s Wistron last year. It is also building another factory in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, where an iPhone components factory was also located and which was involved in a fire accident in September.
Analysts estimate that India will contribute 20-25% of total iPhone shipments this year, compared to 12-14% last year.
The Tata-Pegatron factory, which has about 10,000 employees and produces 5 million iPhones annually, will be Tata’s third iPhone factory in India.