Zhengzhou, the iPhone city, could become less and less iPhone. In 2022, 7% of the iPhones manufactured by Apple came from plants located in India, a big jump compared to the 1% they represented in 2021. The change in manufacturers has a simple explanation: trade tensions between the United States and China have led Apple to start a process of geographical diversification of its manufacturing sites.

In 2018, half of all iPhones were made in Zhengzhou, where one of Apple's major suppliers, Foxconn, has the world's largest iPhone factory. In 2022, things did not go so well in that city, where drastic restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic affected the plant's production, a situation that was aggravated in November by protests and riots, where workers complained about delays in bonus payments and poor living conditions generated by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic .

Foxconn's Zhengzhou complex, which at its busiest times employs 350,000 people, is where Apple's top-of-the-line products are manufactured, with the iPhone 14 leading the way fast .

The migration, however, will not be quick: 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 dependence on manufacturing in China could be reduced to levels between 25% and 40%.