Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Friday said that India will be the country of origin for a majority of iPhones sold in the United States during the June quarter, signalling a strategic shift in the company’s global supply chain away from China.
Speaking during an earnings call with analysts following Apple’s strong financial results for the March quarter, Cook noted that tariffs on Apple products are currently determined based on their country of origin.
“For June, we do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. will have India as their country of origin, and Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods sold in the U.S.,” he said.
China, however, will continue to account for the country of origin for the vast majority of Apple’s total product sales outside the United States.
Cook further clarified that most Apple products — including the iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro — are not subject to the reciprocal global tariffs that were announced in April.
Nonetheless, Apple estimates that tariffs will increase its costs by approximately $900 million in the current April-June quarter. “We estimate the impact, assuming current global tariff policies and applications remain unchanged, to be $900 million. However, we are not able to precisely estimate the total impact due to the potential for further policy changes during the quarter,” Cook said.
Looking ahead, Cook said Apple expects to source more than 19 billion chips from manufacturing units across a dozen U.S. states in 2025, including tens of millions of advanced chips from Arizona.
The company also continues to expand its software localisation efforts. “We just released iOS 18.4, which brought Apple Intelligence to more languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese, as well as localised English for Singapore and India,” Cook added.
— IANS
