Zhengzhou, the “iPhone City,” may be seeing fewer and fewer iPhones. In 2022, 7% of the iPhones manufactured by Apple came from plants located in India—a significant jump from the 1% they accounted for in 2021. There is a simple explanation for this shift in manufacturers: trade tensions between the United States and China have led Apple to begin a process of geographically diversifying its manufacturing facilities.

In 2018, half of all iPhones were manufactured in Zhengzhou, where one of Apple’s main suppliers, Foxconn, operates the world’s largest iPhone factory. In 2022, things did not go so well in that city, where drastic restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic affected the plant’s production—a situation that was exacerbated in November by protests and riots, as workers complained about delays in bonus payments and poor living conditions caused by the pandemic restrictions.

The Foxconn complex in Zhengzhou, which employs 350,000 workers at its peak, is where Apple's flagship products are manufactured, with the iPhone 14 leading the way.  

The shift, however, will not happen quickly: in 2022, of the 200 million iPhones manufactured worldwide, only 6.5 million were made in India. But Bloomberg analysts estimate that by 2030, Apple’s reliance on manufacturing in China could drop to between 25% and 40%.